Jul 2010 Archive, part c

tuba wench wax!funk,nix
U wick Ur

abs NW tote outage
Perhaps?

Its a good thing I have a needle full of Potassium chloride for situations like this. Don't worry, this will only hurt a lot. >=3

Foulness and calamity! Not you again! EFF OFF!

gaaah, stupid trolls...

It's interesting that they use the same subject line. It must be trying to communicate with us. I saw Contact last night, so I vote that it's an alien.
But... it's going about it the wrong way! No math, nothing friendly. So... let's see, what's my best troll-killing weapon? I think... a dictionary! One of the giant ones that sits on a table for people to look in. If I can lift it high enough, I'll drop it on the troll's head.

Must be serious then. I'll pack a Stig.

*bashes repeatedly with a string bag full of tinned cat food*

Out! Out! Go on, scat! *repeatedly beats the troll with the broom end*

I swear, just when you think you've gotten rid of the things, they come right back again! They're like ants! Or cockroaches! Or those darn stray cats that keep mating behind my garden fence.

Begone! Thine cat-on-keyboard chatter is not welcome here!

*repeatedly smacks Troll with a lamp*

Grscdyv, hdnb.

Y76b? Gbsyv, veeblznhsh bswhbg vez. Qwrtey gdh hxhsb sgw bxchbjs Strong Basftfy do.

Dfws wsggj teksoqp gqrts jh!

Translation:
Troll: Hey, anybody want to buy a death stick?
Me: You don't want to sell us death sticks. You want to go home, and rethink your life.

(I think it's safe to assume trolls are weak-minded enough to be force persuaded.)

Here, have this live grenade that's about to go off, I'm sure you'll enjoy it FAR more than an unspecific person/place/thing!

What, this again? I thought we'd taken care of this problem the last time. Hmm. I guess we're going to have to kill this one even more melodramatically than the last one.

*readies her pink eraser-firing bazooka gun*

Anyone else want to help kill this with me?

and although my name is on the list, I don't think I actually did. Did I? Durn.

... though he didn't participate this year.

I opted to write as KawaiiKisses this time around.

brandywinebaby89, who really has no idea what the heck she's doing, but by golly she's gonna do it!

It's really disturbing how many typos happen when you stop caring. O.o My unedited typing isn't actually THAT bad, but it's close.

Incidentally, the donut-eating plant appears in the third section of <a href="http://plotprotectors.tripod.com/JAAKSONS/ch3ficpsych.html">this chapter of the JAAKSONS, which is near and dear to my heart. {= )

~Neshomeh

...to masquerading as the critically acclaimed NiGhT-fIrE-wOlF, who shall hopefully return next year with the next installment in her saga. (Providing, of course, that I'm not too busy at university, and that Teek and Crelmos don't find out about this and have aneurysms.)

This was my first Badfic Game and I'm delighted to have participated. It's such joyfully brain-destroying fun. Hopefully we can all outdo ourselves next year!

Mostly because I wasn't around for this last year so I had no idea what was going on and was too lazy to figure it out. Also I was at the Grand Canyon for most of the week, so I didn't actually find out about it til Monday.

I'll probably do this next year, though.

...but I was Rae365. That was definitely a fun little exercise. Hats off to everyone!

Maybe next time I'll contribute.

I just couldn't bring myself to write anything bad enough... Is it self-esteem problems when you write something and don't think you can make it awful enough to use as lulz?

I was Ellintyra Lloysinthayr, an alias I've used since 2008. She's not normally so inflammatory as she was this year, but I apologise to anyone she flamed.

(It's so much FUN, though. XD)

I know I didn't get a lot done this year, but there's always next year - right?

Well done, everyone!

hS

I was Burning Watier/Burning Visionary, writer of the longest fics on the site (and an obvious attention seeker).

...I was D4rkm0k. Easy to figure out given the OOC end notes. Had a lot of fun and hope to melt my brain again next year.

...I was Nillig-Rot. Fun fact, it's an anagram of 'trolling'. But seriously, that was just fun. We should do more things like that!

I decided early on to never (well, hardly ever) spell my new username the same way twice.

Although you probably could have guessed given her obsession with one of my Agents.

For the record, who was on Team Dafydd and who was Team Suicide?

Elcalion, unleashing his inner fangirl, which is a disturbing thought.

but I was behind Satlie bisqut. Of course, adding ooc notes to the ends of my story and reviews probably didn't help. I had an awesome time, though I had to fight the urge to have a super-snarky "hacker" interrupt randomly during the story and poke fun at the Glodawful writing contained therein.

As far as general definition goes: The PPC is an MST-inspired parody done within the context of a much larger frame story. That's the simplest way to put it.

More than that, the PPC is a shared story-universe, because the frame story tends to overwhelm the MST aspect of it. This isn't a bad thing. The frame story--the plot protectors themselves, headquarters, etc.--is so very fun to play with. The ability to treat stories, and their constituent words, as the makeup of a physical world? Fun! Characters with the ability to move from one story world to another? Fun! Characters who, due to various comedic circumstances, complain like hell about these fantastic things? Fun! And funny.

And finally, the PPC is a community. We all have different reasons for being here, from respect for art to love of snark to simple love of the community itself, but this is a strong community. Futhermore, it's a common-interest community, so we get along well and have a lot to share with each other.

However... Because everyone has a different reason for being here and doing what we do, I think a general statement of intent can be difficult to formulate. If you say we are here to kill Sues, then you leave out the bad-slashers. If you say we are here to fix badfic, then you leave out the people who are just here for the comedy or the neat frame story. If you say we're here to write PPC stories then you leave out the people who just hang out in the community--and so on. The PPC was not originally intended to be what it is, which is something permanent and to a certain extent serious. Once the PPC turned into a community, rather than just Jay and Acacia's fun project, it was put into a state of flux. At the moment, the PPC is simply what its community uses it for. Perhaps that is how it should be, perhaps not. But for the moment? We are what we do, and our purpose here is to do it. That's all.


P.S. Sorry if that seems unhelpful? If writing a general "this is what the PPC is, and this is why we're here!" statement were easy, we would already have one, and it would work for everyone. But it isn't easy, and so I'm just trying for clarification, really. I understand why you guys don't feel comfortable here, I think. I have felt the same way, at times. But it speaks well for the community that you can bring these things up, and have them taken so seriously.

... but wasn't sure whether to release them because of them not being mission-related - they deal a bit with Agent Foxglove's less-cheerful-than-she-claims past and Agent Laburnum's psychological problems and gender identity issues, and while I may think it's fun to torment the girls, I wasn't sure if it would make people uncomfortable since they don't consist of squishing Sues in a humorous manner. I also have some bits of bonding between the agents and the M-kids, which is more funny, but since I couldn't find a mission to fit it into I wasn't sure if people would want to see it. Would people like to see stuff like that? Character development is fun.

Even the Bad Slash stuff I spork tends to involve a character replacement that needs killing, just because that's what I know how to do. I should probably find some more that won't involve a Sue-splatting ... My last one which didn't involve Sue splatting was quite fun, so it could work fine.

My thoughts on the matter are simple: Find badfic, write an interesting tale about it, where the badfic is fixed, and everything returns to normal. Of course, I haven't tested those thoughts in a story yet.

A lot of fandoms are like Rodney Dangerfield: they can't get no respect. To me, the PPC is an (albeit sometimes extreme) example of people fighting back for an accurate depiction of the stories they love.

Humankind have been telling stories almost as long as we've been humans. Early cave paintings were a method of telling stories--even if it was just "there were three guys, and they stabbed a buffalo." As our society evolved, so too did our methods for relating information. Stories entertain us, give us messages, tell us stories about who we are and what sort of world we live in. They can make us think or they can make us cry.

Fanfiction is part of that great literary tradition, too. The first work of fiction, the Epic of Gilgamesh, can be considered RPF--talking all about the fantastical adventures of a real person. But today, with universal communication and universal access via the Internet, there's an awful lot of people out there who aren't treating fiction with the respect it deserves. Authors like Tolkien put their heart and soul into creating whole worlds for us, and people use it as cheap wish-fulfillment.

PPC stands for Protectors of the Plot Continuum. Not Avengers or Inquisitors or anything like that. The purpose of the PPC is to, in some way, try to restore the status quo and preserve the works of fiction in their original form. Sure, it can sometimes get lost under the dark humor and Sue-slaying. But it began with anger over the way a great work of fiction was being mistreated, and that's how it continues. At its heart, the PPC is about respect for art.

. . . and now that sounds pretentious as hell. But that's what I think, and that's why I like it.

Before I found the PPC, I really had no concept of fanfiction besides 'movie/TV/literary characters sleep with each other regardless of actual personality.' They weren't really things I actively sought out. I didn't even know what a Mary Sue was.

I joined up because of how solid the community seemed. Almost everyone appeared to be a lot like me: smart, witty folks who didn't really take themselves that seriously. I wanted to practice my writing in a community like that.

It was actually trying to avoid the typical SCK pattern that I found the most difficult thing while writing my first missions. I scrapped quite a few drafts because I felt that my focus was shifted away from jokes and character interaction to the eventual assassination. There are still a couple missions where I think I fell into that trap.

That concern was one of the major reasons why I developed a Bad Slash team. I've actually had an easier time writing Bad Slash missions as compared to Mary Sue missions, not to mention more fun. And hey, if you're not having at least a little fun writing a story then you're probably doing it wrong.

I have no idea if anything I just wrote makes any sense in regards to the original post. If it helps, then that was my intention. If it's gibberish, than ignore me.

When I first joined, it was for the purpose of bashing badfic.

I'm not terribly good at humor, and I'm a hater of badfic. I tend not to get jokes, and the ones I do are... well... not exactly standard humor.

But--I'm going to get corny--the PPC is more than that. I didn't quite realize that when I joined; I'm a grammar Nazi at heart, and I find idiots hard to deal with. Like I said, I'm not very good at humor; I'm much, much better at writing seriously.

Unfortunately, when PPC gets serious, it becomes exactly what we don't want: "See Sue. Chase Sue. Kill Sue." This is bad. It's not what the PPC is, but it's something I have difficulty grasping, just because I am who I am.

So... yeah.

What's this about killing people? Are these people serial killers?

Holy crap, I thought this was the Podiatrist Patient Community.

Damnit, I'm in the wrong place.

The PPC has always been a community to me. I love the fact that I can talk about super geeky things and people won't act like I've got two heads. I've met a lot of good friends here. I was also introduced to the PPC by a good friend, but she hasn't been around for years.

I've never been a "See Sue, Kill Sue" person. I don't write missions (but I read them) and the humor in them is the most important thing to me. I love anything that is funny and mocking badfic, man...

Writing is one of my passions and the PPC is great about helping others improve. I never thought we were bullies. I wasn't around when a lot of the srs bzns stuff went down, so I can't really comment on that.

If it were just about killing sues, there would be little point in developing characters at all for our stories. Same with mocking badfic. It isn't about those to me, it's more about creating an enjoyable story with interesting characters while doing those at the same time. Yeah, hard to believe, coming from me, of all people... Who doesn't even have permission yet... But it just makes sense.

...Kind of ironic, how I'm saying this, but... I've still got a point. I'm not here for the sue-killing, or for the mpreg-bashing or whatever, or even for the badfic mocking...

I'm here to enjoy myself. I'm here to write for the sake of writing. I'm here because WHY THE HELL NOT.

I enjoy writing darker stuff, and I don't understand the humor in the slightest, so what? We're a community of writers, not badfic haters or comedians or monsters or anything of the sort. I do realize that there's more to this than the sue-killing, and I've tried to show it in my writing for this far too many times to count, despite it being hopelessly rejected or put under the mask of being a joke even though it's entirely serious. I just want to write, that's all.

The PPC is far more than killing stuff for fun. It means something to us, because otherwise, we wouldn't be here discussing it with you, would we?

And to me, the PPC is about expressing ourselves, and the world we've made to express ourselves with. Art is about expression, and writing is a form of art. Even if I'm not funny in any way, shape or form, or if I'm writing what's the complete opposite of what the PPC is supposed to be about in your eyes, I'm still part of this community because I'm expressing myself through what we've made as a group.

...And that's how I feel about the subject, completely unfiltered and uncensored. The PPC means something to me, perhaps even more than you people might understand. To me, simply seeing all of us work together to create something like this is amazing, and that's enough for me to keep trying.

(Just to keep up my one-post, now two-post, trend of pretentious titles.)

Before I say what I meant to say, I should get out of the way the fact that every time I see "we kill Sues", the only thing I can think of is the "movieplot" function of one of the IRC bots on a channel I frequent, which gives a movie plot like this: "He's an all-American sweet-toothed jungle king on the wrong side of the law. She's a cynical psychic femme fatale with her own daytime radio talk show. They fight crime." Just switch "They fight crime" for "They kill 'Sues".

I cannot speak to past issues, but I can talk about what the PPC is to me, and later speak from mostly ignorance about the variety of subject matters in PPC stories.

The reasons I liked the Original Series were not the killing of 'Sues, but the fact that Jay and Acacia picked up on the things I notice even in my daily life: punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, capitalization errors, the kinds of things that create new characters who have one line. The kinds of things that make My Immortal so much fun to read — funny as it is without this interpretation, it becomes even more surreal and bizarre if you interpret each misspelling of a character's name as a new character. Also there are constant references to characters doing things "4 Eva" or "4 eva" or "4eva", but no detail is ever given about the character of Eva. One has to wonder...

But I digress. The point is, the Original Series focused relatively little attention on the deaths of the 'Sues. In short, what I like about the PPC has nothing to do with killing 'Sues and everything to do with the rest of the content of the stories — the interactions between the Agents, the interactions between the Agents and canons, the adoption of spelling errors when appropriate, the travel sickness as the stories covered vast distances in a single word, etc. Not that I enjoy travel sickness, but you know what I mean.

In the grander scheme of things, speaking from ignorance, I think one of the problems is that 'Sues are just plain easier to spot and attack. If there's a female character joining the Fellowship, either in addition to or in place of one of the natural Nine, that sets alarm bells ringing. If a The Dark is Rising story stars a girl who isn't Jane, that does, too, even before she's revealed to be Bran's half-sister or Will's American cousin. It's much more difficult to spot bad slash if the structure of the story is decent, that is, if it's capitalized, spell-checked, etc. appropriately.

Coming from that perspective as a Star Wars fan, I think we should be wary of always taking the easy path — as everyone knows that's a surefire way to fall to the Dark Side.

As other people have mentioned, the PPC at its best is not about killing 'Sues, but about protecting and restoring canon. It's right there in the abbreviation: Protectors of the Plot Continuum. 'Sues are just one of many ways to do that, and I think other ways tend to get overlooked because they require a bit more consideration.

As far as non-fic related things, the reason I like wandering around TVTropes or reading OFUM — not having been here too long, I can't really speak for the PPC just yet — is that I like seeing that other people enjoy the things I enjoy, fandom-wise, and knowing that I'm not the only one who's read and loved, for example, Animorphs. With people in real life, I tend to get eye-rolls and "Oh, those were great when I was in elementary school". They're still great! I want to yell, but that would be awkward.

Final point: as far as espousing goodfic, the problem I see is that there isn't really a way for the PPC to do that, besides its primary endeavor of mocking badfic. The first thing that comes to mind as a solution would be having, like, a "featured goodfic" on the main page of the Wiki, but beyond that I don't know how much it's possible to do.

Hope someone found that comprehensible/interesting/useful.

Regards,
Lleu Llaw Gyffes

To me, the PPC is a place full of nerds where I can be nerdy. More specifically, where having an anal-retentive knowledge of an obscure 80's TV show or an out-of-print novel is not only accepted, but celebrated.

That's what the PPC boils down to for me: a celebration of the fictions we've loved. I think its inherent humor revolves around the fact that we're writing about stories we love and enjoy, and we want others to get that same good feeling.

Maybe, if we go through with the "new image" plans, part of it can be focusing on the canon being restored to its former state at the end of the mission, and make that the climax more than the Sue-kill, or whatever? The PPC: Battling Badfic to Cure Canon.

(I guess that wasn't so brief, which is appropriate, because I'm a boxers guy.)

Yep, it's the humor. but it says something about me that I didn't notice the slip towards "See Sue, Chase Sue, Kill Sue". As for my actions during the accusation episode, the less said about them, the better.

I haven't been here long. At all, really-- but even before I came here I was doing badfic parody.

And now a friend and I have an epic spin-off fanfic in the works with PPC themes in it. It's over 50 pages and in progress, and is likely to span over novel-length. And we have sequels in mind, too. Whether or not it will ever be posted, remains to be seen.

I love exploring fandom. I love exploring what people think and get out of their favorite modern-day mythologies. I love exploring mindsets that can go into interpreting canon. I came here because really, that's what this is about-- one, more mature mindset, poking a bit of fun at a less sophisticated (and kind of embarassing) mindset from the past and showing how goofy it is.

I know so many people who have 'gotten over' the Mary Sue thing, or as extension, the entire badfic thing. It's one mindset. It's not right, but then again, neither is the mindset of an assassin.

But like those goofy cubical-top-mounted Nerf dart turrets, or packing peanut catapults set up in office buildings worldwide, it's a goofy and unthreatening sort of war I personally fight.

So I don't feel bad for hanging out here yet. Or writing long goodfic (I hope!) about an Urple Nexus infesting all of Assassin's Creed.

Well, I'm a newbie here, and I've already come across some stories that are exactly that (See Sue, Chase Sue, Kill Sue).
I intend to write a spin-off as soon as I can, and I've been researching everything I can (from PPC history - Reorganisation and such - to lots of other things).
One of the principles that I think is fundamental for the organisation, regardless of department or division, is the Rule of Funny. If people don't follow it, let them be, but don't give up because of it. I'm not censoring you for taking a break, but really, if you don't like what you're reading because it's not funny enough, close the tab (if your browser has tabs. If it hasn't, I suggest you upgrade it). I've done it half a dozen times.
But if you leave, then you'll be reducing the output of good (funny) stories, and you'll be contributing for the "Sue-slayer" reputation.

This may seem a bit like emotional chantage, and that's exactly what it is (joking).

Recently I've been lurking for similar reasons, although I was already mostly invisible by the time the whole bullying thing cropped up.

I don't think we're bullies. If we went after the authors then that label might be justified, but such actions would be condemned by the community as a whole, or at least so I would hope.

I'm sorry for not speaking up about that idiotic remark about mpreg, but I didn't feel that I had the right to speak up. I've been barely here for so long, that I feel that there's no one who'd listen if I did try and engage someone over a comment about a genre that is one of the most disliked (and usually badly done) in fanfiction.

What attracted me to the PPC, like many other people, is the humour. I wandered in through OFUM, and I enjoyed the way a group of talented writers were able to turn Mary Sue fics into something funny and worth reading. And, despite the way the people here on the Board mocked bad fanfiction, they also loved good fanfic. This was somewhere where I could just be a fan, and learn something about becoming a better writer in the process.

But then we started getting floods of Tropers with the wrong ideas about the PPC. Emergencies and crises became commonplace. Everything became SRS BZNS for a while. I faded into the background because I wanted no part of that. Even when the law was laid down, I continued to lurk. I was content on the fringes, only commented on rare occasions.

And then I realised that all the newbies that were flooding in were getting Permission and starting their own spinoffs. I saw all these new writers adding to PPC canon and contributing to the whole, while I get writer's block within about two sentences every time I try and write a mission. I felt like a failure, so I stayed quiet still.

I won't lie and say I read every spinoff. Not everyone's writing style appeals to me. I will say, though, that DMS/Sue-killing missions are my least favourite type. They've become formulaic, as you've summed up with your statement of "See Sue. Chase Sue. Kill Sue." Would I read Sue-killing missions if they weren't so formulaic? Probably.

If I'm a lurker, why am I still here? Because of friends. There are some wonderful people in this community, and I'd feel bad if I left completely. Despite everything, this is a good community and, if we make a little effort, it'll stay that way for a long time yet, I hope.

...the PPC is about exposing badfic, but it's also about talking to a fun group of people who like goodfic, being able to help my own writing by talking to them and knowing they won't flame you or be all "You're crap, get out." It's about a community of people who like good writing and having fun.

It's a whole lot of things, honestly. Awesome people, writing that's entertaining -- without a whole lot of serious, angst, or drama, a shared love of good writing and the light-hearted mocking of bad writing. (And by bad writing, I do mean just bad writing, not writing with distasteful subject matter. YKINMK, after all.)

I'm not very vocal on the Board, though I do hang around the IRC a lot, and I've made good friends here. The shared universe we all play in is delightfully wacky and enormously hilarious, and... my train of thought left me standing at the station.

Point is, at least for me, the PPC isn't just see sue -- chase sue -- kill sue. It's a whole bunch of other awesome things with a bit of cathartic suekilling thrown in.

There's my two cents, for posterity and whatnot. I'll follow what this thread brings up with interest.

We'd just like to say we're glad you guys aren't gone gone. Neshomeh in particular misses you guys, and is really sorry you felt unwelcome, and wants you back as soon as you want to be back.

We agree with what Calista said about many people being uncomfortable with slash/mpreg sorts of fics, and that's probably a partial explanation for why so few people go that direction with their agents. It actually obeys the "your kink is not my kink" rule. Also, it is really easy to spot a bad OC; other things aren't always so clear.

On the other hand, we also agree that our image outside of the community needs some serious, serious attention. It's true, places like TVTropes and whatnot tend to focus exclusively on the Sue-slaying--probably because it's a common, well-known concept and they don't bother to investigate us any deeper. That's why we had such an issue with the So Sue Me people, too. They lumped us in with everyone else without stopping to find out what really goes on over here, and because that's all they were concerned about, that's the only way we could talk to them. So, for that reason, we're all for getting the real story out there as much as possible. There are some Tropers around here who can at least get on it over there.

It's not that we don't love you guys and your writing. We do. You contribute significantly to the diversity of this place, which is why we want you back. It's not that we don't support Bad Slashers and Disentanglers and everything else. It's just that Sues are so gosh-darn easy to go after. It's probably related to the fact that they're so gosh-darn easy to write, and write badly, in the first place.

However (again), we agree with Sedri that lots of Sue-missions focus too much on getting to the kill and less on the poking the bad writing and hilarious effects thereof. In Barid's words, the kill should be a punctuation mark in the sentence of the overall mission, and we're both attempting to make it so in our work.

Incidentally, Neshomeh is on a hunt for crossovers in her fandoms that are bad enough to PPC that don't also contain a Sue or a character replacement. Harder to find than you might expect.

We would also like to mention FicPsych, which we've noticed has been focusing more and more on agents lately. Neshomeh didn't mean to set a trend when she wrote Ilraen's story; it was meant to be a fairly unique occurance. We'd like to see someone write about the nurses dealing with canons. Neshomeh has plans for one of these.

As for what the PPC is for us...

For Barid, the PPC is jokes, gags, and funny. He tries to bring the funny in his writing. He is not interested in writing, or reading, agents one-upping the other guys with their assassinations. His agents are in the All-Purpose Department for a reason. He has plans to deal with badfic in the Warcraft continuum that do not deal with Sues.

For Neshomeh, the PPC has always been about writing practice, learning to write humor, sharing interests in books, crazy rambling discussions, and FUN. She has a history of sharply curtailing people who try to make the PPC into SRS BSNS, and she will continue to do so.

~Neshomeh (who isn't sure how coherent this post is, but hopes it helps) and Barid (who recently had quite a lot of fun reading Agents Trojie and Pads' escapades during the gender-bender incident).

I'm not very active on here, mostly I just lurk, but the reason I wanted to be apart of this community was for the humor. I loved TOS, because they were funny, not particularly because they killed Sues.

And what this leads me to is saying that I think the missions you two have been writing have followed more in the tradition of TOS than most I've read. Baring TOS the Trojie and Pads missions are my favorites, no contest. It would make me very very sad if you stopped releasing missions.

And about changing the Constitution, I think it's probably about time, seeing as the PPC has grown so much. As you say, there's more to it than just Sue slaying.

Other than that I don't have much to say, although it would be a very great pity if you stopped releasing missions.

The PPC is a place that makes good stories out of bad ones. Anyone can make an acerbic review, but the PPC makes entertaining, funny stories out of honest critique. Yes, there is a large focus on Sue killing. But there is a much larger focus on making fun characters who bounce off each other well.

Also, I would like to take the opportunity to thank both of you for your plethora of amusing and entertaining missions. It was because of you two that I first got interested in the PPC.

I've been kind of lethargic lately in terms of missions. I have one that I'm working on that I've stopped working on and haven't continued working on for about a half a year now. Lately I've been spending my efforts on MSTs, which for some reason are more fun than actual missions. Really, the Sue-killing part has faded into the background, and right now I'm mostly having a bunch of fun fleshing out the two agent pairs I have now, as well as polishing up a third pair to introduce eventually, when I have a few more missions up for the ones that I've already made known.

The PPC, at least to me, is no longer about just finding bad fanfictions and poking fun at what's wrong with them, though this still is a large part. Really, I see the PPC as a place where I can cement my knowledge of the do's and don'ts of writing, and I can have a lot of fun while doing so. Personally, I love the creativity that goes into the PPC canon itself, and writing my characters in such a wacky setting is loads of fun.

So... yeah. The PPC, to me, is pretty much about having fun and learning how to write better. I was always under the impression that this was the point of the PPC to begin with.

Hope this helps.

I initially came across the idea of killing 'Sues (well, more of the plot bunnies that create them) via Bitemetechie's wonderful BunnyBusters series, found here and here. The PPC reminds me so strongly of that- the general snarkiness of the characters, the main point of the stories, and much more- but honestly, what mainly attracted me to the PPC was the sense of community here. I'm not sure what you mean by the whole bullying thing, as I'm relatively sure I joined after all that went down, but I can see how it might affect people. For instance (and isn't it funny how life works), one of the people I did drama with last quarter had a story of hers that had a mission written about it, and told me about it a few weeks after I joined the PPC. She wasn't particularly happy about it, but I could see why the fic needed to be taken care of.

People never like criticism, even if it's just gentle satire that's poking fun at a particular idea. That goes beyond the realm of fanfic as we all know, so it's not particularly anything new. I agree that the general purpose of the PPC is more than anything to mock badfic, and I know that I've been guilty of focusing mainly on taking care of Mary Sues. I've a plan to remedy that, but it's probably not going to be until I finish this bit of character arcing I've started for one of my DMS agents.

As for what we should do about it, I rather like the idea of there being a sort of in-universe image revamp. I know I'd have fun seeing battle-weary Agents, regardless of Department, trying drum up recruits at say, a job fair or a convention (SDCC maybe? It's current... *shrugs*) and just wishing that they could be out fighting 'Sues or Slash-Wraiths or whatever. My mind works in odd ways, yes, but then again, who has a normal mind here, anyways?

And that, more than anything, is what I like about the PPC, and I'll say it once again- the community. I know I'm excited about the Seattle Gathering that coming up soon, and I'm already planning to get up Glod-awfully early to get there on time. That's all I'm gonna say; I know I'm rambling.

Pretzel

P.S. Oh, and the vocabulary. I'm lovin' the vocabulary. I already picked up stuff from Firefly, but now I'm using things like "glauranging" and "Glodawful". Thanks. ;)

A little over half of the missions I have written (if I count the one I just finished that isn't published yet) do not deal with Sues. I tend to worry a lot more over the non-Sue missions, because of the "Your kink is not my kink" issue. Maybe that is a good thing. I put a lot of thought into choosing those fics, asking myself if I would read a story along those lines if it was well done. Sometimes I decide, no I wouldn't and pass it up. I honestly don't like mpreg stories (although I can admit to you having shown me at least one humor based one that was good that I did like), so until I can answer that I could be happy reading non-humor based mpreg, I won't be targeting them. There are several other things that I can think of I won't be targeting, and several things I can think of that I wish were done well more often. I think I am probably harder on the things that had the potential to be something I would have liked, but went the badfic route instead of working at it. Then when I pick one like that I worry about whether I am being too harsh, because my expectations were high.

If you (or anyone else) ever see anything I've done that you don't feel was appropriate, tell me. I really don't want to judge it wrong and target one I should have left alone. Anyway, lots of worrying, and all centered around the missions that don't have a pink glittery sign blinking over the whole fic shouting "I am a Sue! Someone kill me please!" Those are a lot simpler in terms of group consensus as to what is good and bad.

Reasons I joined the PPC:
1. It's a lot of fun.
2. It's a pretty nice community that also broadens my horizons a bit, because it such a diverse group.
3. To improve my ability to write humor.
4. To improve my ability to write dialogue.
5. To mock badfic.
6. To have a place where I can receive feedback from reviews, betas, etc. in a relatively safer environment than the publishing industry, from a group of people who adhere to a strict goodfic policy and as a community are willing to help each other become better writers.

(I really hope that I have actually said what I am trying to say. I'm sorry if I didn't.)

Good question.

It's a place where you can mention how you used to rip the heads off of Barbie dolls when you were a kid, and you get a handful of replies that quickly turn into a discussion on Barbie dolls, branching out into how terribly wrong they are to give impressionable young girls, and on the other branch, on how much fun it is to mutilate them.

It's a place where you can post some strange, weird, quirky news story that looks like someone gacked it from a Neil Gaiman short story, and people react by creating a world around it, or just with interesting conversation.

It's a place where you can tell someone, "You're cool and all, but honestly if you don't start capitalizing your proper nouns, I will turn this flamethrower on you," and you get eight cheers, two eye-rolls, and one wall of text about the dogma of capitalizing the pronoun for yourself, and how postmodernism exposed it. (I'm pretty sure that's never happened, at least not quite like that. But it could!)

It's a place where a bunch of strange, interesting, crazy, and awesome people get together to talk about and write good fanfiction, and help each other and other writers out, to keep sanity by laughing at bad fanfiction (and occasionally bad fiction, full stop), and often/occasionally other things.

It's the place where I learned about Terry Pratchett, which gives it a special meaning right off.

It's a crazy, crazy universe with Flowers That Be, and literal plotholes, and consoles that shouldn't be able to talk but do, and a fountain of Beepka, if you can find it; a place where the only way to get where you're going is to stop trying to get there, a place that's impossibly huge and impossibly small, where there are agents of every conceivable race, whether we've written them yet or not.

It's the place where I met my unrelated older brother, and too many close friends to try counting. The place where I grew up, in many senses of the word.

It's a canon and fandom that you can belong to without having written a mission in years, or without ever having written a mission-- and ye gods am I glad for that.

No, the PPC is not See Sue, Chase Sue, Kill Sue, and I hope it never will be. And thank you, for saying this, because I agree with just about all of what you've said here, and I really hope we don't lose you. You're both an integral part of the craziness; please stay.

You're my friends, and I had no idea you felt that uncomfortable, and that unwelcome. I'm sorry. :(

I know I'm more than guilty of being vicious with the killing of Sues in my missions, but from my perspective, that's not what missions are about at all. When I think of the PPC, the first things I think of are the absurd gadgets and the use of plotholes like doorways - the mind-boggling manifestations of bad writing. Yes, I use mission-writing as a way of relieving stress when I'm upset or frustrated with a particularly bad badfic, but what I'm most proud of - and what I remember most about what I've read or written - are things like the Capillary Towel, or the navigation of HQ's corridors; the things that make us so different from characters like Bourne.

Regarding the bullying argument... once it was over, I more or less ignored it. I don't believe that we are bullies or that we ever have been, though I can see why some people may feel attacked. I don't know if it helps you, Trojie, but in your shoes, I would've been happy to see that my department wasn't really involved in the debate - the fact that "PPC" had been essentially equated with "DMS" seemed like less of an issue than the fact that we were mocking fics at all; Sues were just the easy focus. But I see where you're coming from.

Maybe there's a way to remedy this. Maybe we could all, as a community, make a point of toning down the death-focus in our missions, or take the time to write something set in the PPC that isn't a mission. Maybe those of us whose agents are assassins can have them branch out, be more versatile - tackling highly OOC fics and performing exorcisms rather than killing replacements. There are many options.

Any takers? Can we arrange to do more things like FanficLand, perhaps? Can we make a group effort to mock non-Sue badfics? I don't see why we can't. Perhaps we could even create an in-universe explanation - nothing as dramatic as the Emergencies (perish the thought), but perhaps the Flowers will decide that the PPC's public image (*cough, cough*) needs improvement and so make non-Sue missions priority for a while?


As for amending the constitution and such, I'm all for it. Go forth and tweak.

Did I answer your question? I think I did. To me, the PPC is about silliness and poking fun at badfic, with a tactful definition of what is "bad". I generally stick to Suefics because I am very good at telling when an OC is a Sue or not, and avoid bad slash missions because I'm no judge of slash. I always PPC fics that are to the extreme end of "bad", not the middle-ground ones. However, in light of what you're saying, I see no reason why I can't cart my agents off to work on OOC fics for a while - it's not like we can't spot bad characterisation. And that would be more fun (and less destructive), which is, as you say, the point.



...So will you please come back? I'm not kidding when I say I feel awful. I miss you two.

I see people mutilating the books I love, and it's just so wonderful to read fics that show people setting it right. Simple as that. Plus, there's the opportunity to write what I guess is metafiction--something I've always liked, ever since I realized the concept existed--basically, stories about stories.

Killing Sues isn't particularly important to me; it's more of a means to an end. This would be why I've put my agents in Floaters. I want to try them all--exorcisms, geographical aberrations, messed-up crossovers, kidnapped canons, and yes, Mary Sues.

I learned some writing tips from the missions I read. I can only hope that other writers will eventually learn from the ones I write. If I can get past the writer's block on Page Five of mine, that is. :P

Something else I like about the PPC is the concept of the PPC itself. The idea of an organization that polices fan fiction just tickles my fancy. I keep on working out the details of the "rules" of the PPC continuum--which are internally consistent, despite the fact that they're nothing like the way our world works. (My standard approach when I fall in love with a new continuum is to find out everything about it.)

In the PPC, everything depends on irony and humor and Murphy's Law; and they're real "laws of physics", enforced by a Legal Department, no less. Even the inconsistent things have an explanation--HQ is just that weird, and what else would you expect from a place that runs on plot holes and has access to dozens of continua with time machines?

Also: The relief from angst, from "badass" characters, and from general taking-itself-way-too-seriously fiction. It's nice to see characters who face death and insanity every day without wangsting or turning into musclebound Schwarzenegger clones. I love watching underdogs succeed; and that's what PPC agents basically are. Very, very snarky underdogs, in most cases, which makes it even better. Even the "serious" PPC stories avoid the overly-dramatic issue. (Does anybody read the webcomic "Order of the Stick"? It's done a very similar thing, creating serious plotlines while keeping a great level of humor, much like the PPC.)

And of course there's the benefit of talking to other people who also love books. That's always a bonus for me; in real life, I mostly meet people who are into video games or TV shows, and I don't get the opportunity to talk about books all that much.

I was originally drawn to the PPC's wiki by the humor I found on the TVTropes page. Through the wiki, and the stories I discovered via said wiki, I discovered a community of genuinely cool people who enjoyed writing humorous and occasionally serious stories parodying some of the worst fanfic out there. Not out of any desire to be malicious, but rather for humor's sake, and to make those badfic slightly more tolerable. Anyone who says that the PPC is a group of bullies has obviously never bothered to get to know the members, or payed close attention to the wiki. After all, the other thing the PPC is about is helping people write better. That's why we have a whole chain of beta-readers, and why we're willing to give tips to fanfic writers outside of the PPC to help them write better. Because that's what the PPC does. They mock badfic, but they're not mean about it. They're always willing to help those who want it to write better.

As a side note, I really do hope that Trojie and Pads continue to write new PPC stories. It may sound a little silly, but I kind of look up to you two, and hope to be as good of a writer as you two are one day. You guys are also part of the reason why I'm planning on focusing more on badslash once I get around to requesting permission.

Granted, not as many people seem to find it as easy to spork bad slash, but I'm fairly confident in saying that in the community, at least, bad slash missions are generally dearly loved, hence your fame. I personally keep meaning to try to find a new fic for my Bad Slashers, or a crossover, because I'm getting a little tired of seeing Sue-missions everywhere I turn.

In short, I think you're right. We're not just a Sue-sporking community, we're a community for mocking bad writing of all kinds and (just as importantly) celebrating good. Bring back the PPC's beloved diversity!

Name: Kaiko Aozora/Eclectus (I go by both)
Gender: Female
Nationality: (Regretfully) American
Fandoms: Hikaru no Go, Death Note, Miyazaki, Valdemar, HP, LotR, Angelic Layer, Fullmetal Alchemist, D.Gray-Man, Narnia,
Hobbies: Drawing, writing (fanfic and original--I've been shifting towards original lately); disgusting everyone who follows female gender stereotypes (EW, she touched a BUG!); webcomics, commiserating with like-minded people, animanga
Likes: Well-done mild romance (although unfortunately, yaoi has put me off MxM); animals, concrit, manga, reading, webcomics, fantasy, sci-fi, STEAMPUNK Dislikes: M-fic (Slash or het), prejudice, 'phobes, willful ignorance (especially of the political and scientific variety), stupid people, people who enjoy klling (one meme that does not deserve to survive), badly done romance, disturbing pairings, bad writing (especially SPAG-deficient writing); "It's fanfic, I don't need to use logic!" (Yes, someone actually gave me this argument)
Other: Kaiko Aozora's my nick in the Pit.

Just a note--since I don't have permission yet, "Fandoms" is just fandoms I read. The animanga ones are surprisingly limited, since I'm keeping myself to ones I've finished. ^.^;

Name: Anity or Leo
Gender: Genderqueer
Nationality: American
Fandoms: Buffy, Firefly, Harry Potter, mostly inactive Den of Shadows/Keisha'ra, used to be in Dragonriders of Pern and Star Wars
Hobbies: Belly dance, horses, reading, writing, roleplaying
Likes: Horses, music, sarcasm, femslash, fanfiction, good porn, candles, black tea
Dislikes: Med side effects, spelling and grammatical errors, herbal "tea", needing parental permission
Other: My lj username is slashmarks. I write Agents Nadine and Jodi, Department of Floaters, and their (two) missions can be found at nadineandjodi.webs.com.

Also shamelessly-stealing Ansela's template-thingy.

Name: Elcalion, Cam
Gender: Male
Age: 24
Nationality: Australian
Fandoms: LoTR, Star Wars, Discworld, Star Trek reboot, Supernatural, X-Men, Harry Potter, Narnia,
Hobbies: Playing music (Violin, viola, mandolin, clarinet), reading (many, many books), Sims 2, Oblivion, almost any Star Wars game, cooking, brewing beer, volleyball, rugby, cycling, languages (to varying degrees, French, German, Czech, Latin, Sindarin, Quenya, Adunaic)
Likes: Historical fics (e.g. plausible fill-in-the-gaps-of-history such as Second Age LoTR fics), well-written AUs, tea (iced and otherwise), Pilsener beer, correcting others' spelling and grammar, irony, tango
Dislikes: Celery, liquorice, capsicum (bell peppers to you Yankees), slash in basically all its forms, the word "misspell" which I always worry about getting wrong,
Other: elcalion on LJ, also strangler-fig (PPC only stuff)

Lesse here...

Name: Data Junkie, or Nifar. First name Raven. Yes, I know it's Sue-ish, hush. My parents are hippie gamers. >>
Gender: What, I can't make the "yes please" joke? Fine. Male.
Nationality: American. I'm a citizen of the city-state of Seattle at heart, though. Then again, I also live in the year 2073 at heart. >>
Fandoms: Whoverse, Shadowrun, D&D, L5R, the Drageara books, Transformers, Discworld, anything by Neil Gaiman, Whedonverse, True Blood (books and TV series), and a metric shit-ton of other stuff.
Hobbies: Reading the whole internet (or at least most of it), playing video games, board games, and RPGs, reading, watching TV, going to clubs and conventions.
Likes: Shadowrun, so-bad-it's-good fic, good writing and plot, friendly people, chocolate, bacon, listening to music, steampunkery, writing.
Dislikes: Bad writing that's not so-bad-it's-good, OOCness, non/dub-con, canon-rape, tweenage romance stories, chatspeak, people who think spelling and grammar is optional on the internet ignorance, bigotry and people who think having a learning disability means that you're sub-human.
Other: I can be found via LJ at DataPanda, or via email at pandagamerx@yahoo.com

We all seem to be saying we like reading. So let's talk about that.

My In Progress books at the moment are:

The Two Towers - I galloped through FotR in January, and put TTT in my bag so it'd be to hand, and then somehow never sort of got on with it. Just got to the crossroads.

A Fortress of Grey Ice, by J V Jones - someone on my flist recced it because, and I quote, "dude, I think my elf analogues are gay". Loving the series so far.

Peter F Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. Started it on a train. Liked, didn't quite continue, read seventeen other books instead.

Figments of Reality by Jack Stewart and Ian Cohen. These guys are my glods. I always have one of theirs on the go.

Plus more information helps differentiate between people with similar names and maybe will help newbies be less confused?

*shamelessly ganking Ansela's format because it is nice and makes for less thinking* :P

Name: Makari Crow or Makari Tengu, depending on the situation.
Gender: Female (oddly, I often get mistaken for male. I'd thought Makari sounded feminine but... no?)
Nationality: American, though I attend university in Canada.
Fandoms: Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, FFVII-FFXII, Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, Old Kingdom etc., Kingdom Hearts, theoretically xxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle -- these are the high points. I like and am familiar with a lot more, but... yeah.
Hobbies: writing (original and fan), reading (again, original and fan), occasional drawing, most JRPGs, dance, sewing, singing, knitting, breaking various brains, and tempting fate.
Likes: All of the above. Also dogs, vibrant and eye-searing colors, good and well-thought-out AUs of the non-high school variety, this place, hand-knit socks and hats, the theatre, friends, friendly acquaintances, people who put up with me talking too much, and much much more.
Dislikes: Simple misspellings that could be caught by anyone with half a brain and an elementary grasp of phonics (alternately, a spellchecker), contrived plot, blatant misuse of the English language ('voice' in prose is one thing. Rampant unintelligibility is another.), pressure, those songs that get played literally every opportunity possible on the radio, and bad movie adaptations. And so on.
Other: I have two settings so far as socializing: almost completely mute or talking ears off. :D

Name: Araeph
Gender: Female
Nationality: American
Fandoms: Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Trek
Hobbies: Reading, writing, drawing, playing the violin, and mocking bad fanfiction.
Likes: Mexican hot chocolate, great writing, proofreading (my day job), winter weather, the Spanish language, mythology
Dislikes: Mary Sues, bashing of strong female canon characters, and OOCness. I don't dislike technical errors...I love them. They're usually the highlight of my day. :D
Other: My agents are Mara and Isaiah. I've been with the PPC since 2003.

Name: Huinesoron, hS, or David.
Gender: Male
Nationality: British
Fandoms: Well, I don't spend much time in fandom any more, but I'm still essentially Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Doctor Who (old and new), Discworld. I dabble in many others, though.
Hobbies: Reading, writing, Minecraft. I play various other computer games, but none consistantly. I pretend to learn various coding languages and methods occasionally. Mostly I read.
Likes: My wife, Heather Dale's music, books I haven't read before by authors I like, fanfics I have read before and like (which makes me rubbish at reading newer PPC missions, I'm afraid).
Dislikes: Authors who take ages to write their next book, having to go to bed at a reasonable time, work, work, work, not being able to finish writing things I start.
Other: My wife is Kaitlyn, who was once active on the Board, but isn't really any more. I don't write PPC missions very often nowadays, but tend to do stuff about hypothetical histories and futures of the PPC, when I do anything at all.

hS

Name: Tungsten_Monk (Tungsten, TM, TWM)
Gender: Female
Nationality: American
Fandoms: GI Joe, Harry Potter, DC Comics (mostly Batman), Watchmen, Discworld, Lord of the Rings, Team Fortress 2, Artemis Fowl, Harry Dresden, too many others to name
Hobbies: Reading, writing original fiction, costume-making, fanfiction (oh God, so much fanfiction!), drawing comics, goofing around with my brothers
Likes: Classic folktales and myths with all the original gory bits left in, bogeyman stories, a sense of humor even in drama, putting story over message, historical accuracy, respecting villains as characters even if they're going to be defeated, psychotic protagonists (Rorschach, etc)
Dislikes: Dim fangirls who think that psychosis is sexy (again, Rorschach--he's a great character, but you would NOT want to meet him), bad grammar and spelling, OOC pairings (be it slash, het, incest, whatever), Mary Sues, the presumption that good equals sexy, and Twilight.
Other names used: You'll find me lurking on ff.net as Totenkinder Madchen, and I used to be on some fanfic sites as Bronze Clockwork.
Trivia: The W in TWM comes from Wolfram, the original name of the element of tungsten. It was sort of bestowed on me by the boarders here, so now it's considered my middle name. :D
I spent one year writing "Thief of Midnight" and three years getting it published. Publishing Time is not the same as our Earth Time.
I have a strong affection for henchmen, secondary villains, and the other little nobodies who make fictional universes run so well. My current big fanfiction project is a story about life in GI Joe, told from the POV of a base cook--somebody who would never be mentioned in canon, but who must exist in order for the unit to function.

... ow. *rubs nose.

Name: Aster Corbett
Gender: Female
Nationality: American.
Fandoms: Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Assassin's Creed, Star Wars, Fire Emblem, various Anime.
Hobbies: fanfic, chatting with pals, playing video games, reading Scifi and Fantasy, trolling the trolls, using Photoshop/ The Gimp, equestrian activities, knitting, LARPing, Web Design.
Likes: The internet, acknowlegement of Canon, lots of music no one has ever heard of, hot black tea, interesting pairings, really good food, helping people, Ganondorf.
Dislikes: juvenile concepts, Sarcasm Failure, people who refuse to think deeply, OOCness where Rule of Funny fails, Yaoi/Yuri (sorry, 90 percent of is is 14 year olds wanting to see two of the same sets of plumbing get it on), being misunderstood on the internet.
Other: I have no LJ, but I do have a Deviantart.

Name: WikiMaster.
Gender: Male.
Age: 17
Nationality: Filipino.
Fandoms: Artemis Fowl, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Code Geass, Gunnerkrigg Court, Keychain of Creation (although I'm unable to buy Exalted), Lord of the Rings, Order of the Stick, Medieval II Total War, Warcraft (though not World of Warcaft as I'm unable to buy it too) etc.. etc...
Hobbies: Reading, Surfing the Internet.
Likes: Goodfic.
Other: My LJ usename is wikimaster.

tl;dr - am standard human female with mind as impressionable as dollop of warm wax.

Name: Trojie
Gender: Female
Nationality: British (living in NZ)
Fandoms: Narnia, Merlin, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Tamora Pierce, Lord of the Rings, Discworld, Good Omens, American Gods, probably more that I'll remember as soon as I hit 'post'.
Hobbies: Writing, singing, playing the guitar and the bagpipes, fanfic, fanvids,
Likes: slash, angst, interestingly warped power dynamics, comedy, eating high-sugar foods, fruit juice, cowriting things with Pads, feedback on my writing.
Dislikes: Bad biology, shouting, awkward situations, stressful situations.
Other: I hate chat programs but you can catch me on LJ at agenttrojie.

Name: PoorCynic, aka Brendan

Gender: Male

Nationality: American

Fandoms: Avatar The Last Airbender (the cartoon, not the movie), the DC animated universe, Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Discworld, Doctor Who, Firefly, MST3K, Red vs Blue, Sherlock Holmes (movie and books)

Hobbies: Video production, reading, video games (mostly strategy and western RPG), writing film reviews

Likes: History, popcorn, diet soda, The Daily Show, anything with Stephen Fry, crossword puzzles, anything by Bill Bryson or Dave Barry, well supported and plausible slash

Dislikes: Political punditry, people who spout opinions without first doing any research, people who yell or sing into their headphones while playing online video games, stupid comparisions to Hitler or the Nazis, tomatoes

Other: My missions are posted on LJ under the name vgdivision. My name on the Paranoia Live bboard is Elm-R-FUD.

Name: Helen
Gender: female
Nationality: American (specifically the Northwest)
Fandoms: LOtR, anything Neil Gaiman, Susan Cooper, Sherlock Holmes (the books, not the movie), Battlestar Galactica, anything Joss Whedon, V, Starsky and Hutch, Princess Bride (book and movie), and if I list everything we'll be here all night
Hobbies: archaeology (my dad was an archaeologist), researching things, mythology (Arthurian, Greek/Roman, Celtic, etc), traveling
Likes: reading, tea, my cats, reading, watching reruns of Star Trek: TNG
Dislikes: taking Latin, actually having to work, people who are too lazy to be intelligent, people who are incompetent

Extra: writing is my life, I do very little else and I'm normally not all that talkative, hence my lurker status.
I guess that's it. huh, that was kind of fun.

Helen of Pylos (the face that launched half a dozen ships, 'cause everything's smaller in Pylos)

(Pen)Name: Sedri
Gender: Female
Nationality: British/Aussie/Kiwi-ish
Fandoms: Star Trek (all series except the original 60s), Wicked, Stardust, Narnia, Harry Potter (mostly inactive), Lord of the Rings(mostly inactive), Pirates of the Caribbean (mostly inactive), Enchanted(mostly inactive), and quite a few more that I dip my toes into from time to time. (Also, to the shock and horror of some around here, I have actually read all the Twilight books, and I did not hate them. I didn't like the gushy "oh-he's-so-gorgeous" prose, the two main characters, or the love story (therefore, 80% of the text), but I rather liked the rest.)
Hobbies: reading and writing (or is that too obvious to mention?), singing, and... more reading.
Likes: Good AUs (particularly the fix-it kinds), character explorations, logical extrapolations and plot extentions, fluffy romance (sometimes), and non-dirty humour, particularly when it's family-oriented.
Dislikes: cliches, cheap humour, implausible plots, forced romances, and sneaky OOCness that is hard to spot and therefore seeps into my brain while reading fanfic making it very difficult for me to keep a grip on canon characterisations when I write - this is why I try not to read any fanfic in the relevant continuum when I'm working on a story. And chatspeak, spelling errors, and bad grammar. I work as a proofreader, and I have a knife. You have been warned.
Other: On both Livejournal and FanFiction.Net I am "Sedri".

Well, there probably are reasons, but I don't care. And I'll copy your format out of laziness unoriginality.

Name: Vixenmage, VM, other assorted aliases, including Pax and others

Gender: Female

Nationality: American

Fandoms: Lord of the Rings (including all related works), House MD, Harry Potter, Tortall, Circle of Magic, Sandman, American Gods, Discworld, Dresden Files, Codex Alera, Runescape, Oblivion, mythologies, and other assorted tomfoolery.

Hobbies: Walking, singing, writing (obviously), playing guitar/French Horn/trumpet/harmonica-badly, whistling, climbing things, drawing, biking, playing Oblivion, roleplaying in general (but especially chat-based), making things up.

Likes: writing, English, language in general, music in almost every form, stories, characters, roleplaying, Outdoors, trees, The Ocean, mountains, tiny moments that make life a little more beautiful, interesting conversations, making something out of nothing, mythology of all kinds, artists, art, craziness, vegetarian sushi (avocadoes ftw!), birds, feathers, the taste of oil pastel (don't ask), chocolate, tea, coffee, loose and well-graffiti'd T-shirts, clothes that are about comfort instead of lust, metaphysics, conversations about metaphysics, people who can talk about theology without profanity, interesting and poignant and artistic graffiti... (I'll leave it; pages of everything that make life awesome are unnecessary, y'all can fill in the blanks)

Dislikes: chatspeak, leetspeak, netspeak, replacing letters with numbers, replacing words with numbers, (A/N: LOLZ! These stupid fracking things!!!1), idiots, the willfully ignorant, mindless vandalism, discussions that turn into angry arguments, poor characterisation, prejudice of any kind, stigmatizing against mental illness, classes where you don't learn anything, clutter (hypocritically so), cockroaches, people who kill spiders/bugs outside, litter, antagonism.

Other: I think we should share more non-PPC-centric ideas here. I miss the abundance of OT threads we used to have, though I think a lot of that gets siphoned off to the IRC, which is alright. It'd just be fun to see more craziness.

Oh heck, I'll jump on the bandwagon. I love the community too.

Name: PitViperOfDoom
Gender: Female
Nationality: American, half-Chinese on my mother's side
Fandoms: Redwall, Happy Tree Friends, Avatar the Last Airbender, sometimes Harry Potter, and I'm starting to look more into the L4D fandom.
Hobbies: Reading, writing, and drawing. I also love the outdoors, thanks to my mother's tendency to drag the family on crazy backcountry adventures.
Likes: Constructive criticism, cats, Chinese takeout, music in general, ferrets, and hiking/camping/miscellaneous outdoor activities.
Dislikes: Trolls, paperwork, homework, bad OOCness, stubborn writers who assume all negative reviews are flames, and fundamentalists. I really, really don't like fundamentalists.
Fun facts: I'm obsessed with a bunch of video games that I've never actually played before. I am completely indifferent to Twilight; there are some things I like about it and a lot of things I don't. I am very liberal. I often find myself enjoying movies that critics/everybody say are absolutely horrible. There are exactly three movies I have seen that I have not enjoyed: Dragon War: D-War, The Golden Compass (only temporarily, though), and Where the Wild Things Are.

My original introduction thread was not long ago, but I'll hop on the bandwagon, because why not?

Name: Nat, Lleu (Llaw Gyffes is optional)
Gender: male
Nationality: American, but I have always felt that I was meant to be Canadian
Fandoms: I am taking this with an implied "...that I would work in", as "things I like" proved to be too broad an interpretation. In no particular order, Animorphs, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Dark is Rising, Young Wizards, Diana Wynne Jones, Tamora Pierce (I tend to prefer the Circle books), Star Wars, Star Trek (particularly ENT and TNG), Pern, and there are probably a bunch of others that I'm forgetting. There are also things I like that I don't know that I'd want to work with.
Hobbies: role-playing games (I haven't had the chance to RP online in a very long time...actually, ditto for tabletop, unfortunately), writing, reading, various computer games (particularly Civ3 and KotOR), conlanging, languages, making RPG characters I will never use
Likes: good slash, listening to music, French, good books, D&D, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Italian food, poutine
Dislikes: coffee and tea, fruit, my mind is failing to bring up other things I dislike, so eh
Other: I'm on tumblr as fralusans-ana-marein (or, if you're interested in my conlang stuff, the not-updated-in-forever constructed-adventures); I am also known on the internet variously as Pahh(ur/wenaz), Arunaza, and Sectori.

As someone else, MAXinsanity, I think, said, I hold that fictional characters are real, in the sense that they have existence in the mind. Conceptual existence and physical existence are distinct characteristics which sometimes exist and sometimes do not.

Well, here's me. I guess this'll help for the Seattle Gathering...

Name: Pretzel or Christy
Gender: Female
Nationality: Native of Mukilteo, Washington (American)
Fandoms: Oh, geez. Um, let's see... Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Discworld, Narnia, Eureka, Firefly/Serenity, Warehouse 13, CSI, CSI: NY, NCIS, NCIS: LA, Star Wars, ST:TNG, ST:Voy, Are You Being Served?, Monty Python, Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, Leverage, Lie To Me, Rocky Horror, Riese the Series, Sanctuary, Harper's Island

The list goes on and is continually changing...
Hobbies: Writing (both fanfic and original fiction), reading, hanging out with my friends & family
Likes: the cheesy made-for-tv movies on the SyFy channel, books, the Nostalgia Critic/ Nostalgia Chick movie/tv reviews, The "Minds" machinima series (save for Felix's Mind), chocolate, good books/fic, steampunk
Dislikes: Not much, save for retch-worthy physics in a movie, bad writing, OOCness, people who use chatspeak in their everyday speech, people who are intolerant of other peoples' views, the vocal minority who give religions and other social groups a bad name
Other: I'm a closet (no pun intended) slash fan, mainly for Stargate Atlantis, even though I don't write it myself. I tend to latch onto side characters, and often it'll be those that people aren't particularly fond of, like Doctor Kavanagh from Stargate Atlantis. I proudly claim the title of geek girl, and don't care what people think about that. I'm a fraternal twin (though people rarely believe it when they see my twin; we're both girls, but she's 5'9" and a redhead, and I'm 5'2" and a brunette), have at least three "adopted" brothers, and tend to laugh at vaguely inappropriate moments during movies. I have an odd sense of humor, and am rather snarky when the mood takes me. I have been part of two ARGs (Alternate Reality Games), including one that's currently ongoing.

Name: Miah
Gender: Female
Nationality: American (Don't call me a Yankee, I'm Southern!)

Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes, NCIS, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Monty Python, Anne McCaffrey, Star Trek (except Voyager and Enterprise), Star Wars (Episodes 4,5,6 and some of the extended verse, especially the X-Wing series), LotR, Mark Twain

Hobbies: Writing original and PPC fics, Reading original fiction and fanfics, research, making overly detailed plans that I know are not likely to amount to anything, being overly optimistic, making pictures of characters.

Likes: Goodfic, reviews, chocolate, brownies, iced tea, Chinese food, reviews, chatting, Cajun food, learning new things, documentaries, reading out loud to my kids, cuddling with my husband, reviews, movies based on comic book characters. IC fics of any sort, but I am particularly fond of non-sex hurt/comfort. (Whump: all about torturing the character and then putting them back together again without the sex that is common in standard hurt/comfort.)

Dislikes: Cleaning house, bugs, pollen, mold, heat (basically the outdoors 9-10 months of the year), sudden changes, face-to-face interactions in groups of less than about five, stupid rules, OOCness, canon breakage, cinnamon flavored candies, mornings, glitchy or slow computers and programs.

Other: I am pretty much Miah everywhere I go. Occasionally I am Miah79 (like on the wiki) or Miah.Arthur (like my gmail) or MiahArthur (like my LJ), but Miah is always in there somewhere. I write Agents Miah Arthur and Cali Still in DMS Freelance; RC 4096 (The Lair). I also write Agents (David) Kelok and Unger recently transferred to the All-Purpose Department, Sherlock Holmes Division; RC 1729 (The Fire Pit).

I am working on understanding and writing humor, and improving my use of dialogue. I have a real problem with grammar, like a grammar phobia. It doesn't make sense. It has variable applications. Nothing can be said, "Always do this with this thing". Anyway, I do try, and I always request a beta that can check grammar before I publish a mission or interlude. That doesn't stop me from making errors in Board posts, chats, and emails, though.

Here, have some facts on me:

1. My name is... I'm not telling. Privacy is an extremely important thing to me, though I will say I have an identical twin, and that I'm male (As is my twin). I'm not exactly a very confident person when it comes to... well... anything, really. What I have been told, however, is that I'm an amazing writer and roleplayer by people on the internet.

2. I first started writing stories as a way to vent my anger and other emotions, as well as to escape from my loneliness and general other negative crap. I've kinda grown out of that now, and have changed from minor wish fulfillment crap to exploring the concept of fiction itself and generally making the fourth wall less than non-existent (As seen in my entry for Fanfic Land, "Things Unsaid").

3. I have a bit of an odd belief that fiction is "real" in a very odd, vague sense. After all, we end up creating such incredibly detailed worlds and people... Nothing too crazy, though. My tendency to overdevelop my characters' personalities and create them first and foremost as people as opposed to just characters for a story probably stems from this.

4. I have very slight feelings for Alice Alexandria, my Breloom pokemorph character... Let's just leave it at that... Doesn't help that she's one of the most developed characters I have, personality-wise...

5.I'm interested in quite a few video games, including Pokemon, NiGHTS Journey of Dreams, Monster Hunter, Left 4 Dead, and more recently the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You can blame my friends for that one. I don't watch much TV, finding the internet a far more reliable source of entertainment.

6. I LOVE MUSIC. Music is one of those things I wouldn't be able to live without! Except country, I hate country.

7. You probably know this, but I lack a sense of humor. Hardly anything is funny to me, and I can't write humor for my life.

...And yeah. That's all I'm gonna disclose.

Name: Elemarth, occasionally Helyna
Gender: Female
Nationality: American, dual citizenship with Britain
Fandoms: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Young Wizards, Harry Potter, Old Kingdom (Abhorsen)
Likes: fanfic: OCs, stories that mesh with canon; general: avoidance of cliches, three-dimensional characters and shades of gray
Dislikes: bad grammar, lack of responses to the readers (for stuff posted online), people who jump to fight someone without making sure they know what was said, people who think the world is about sex, people who use words incorrectly (like saying a shy person is "antisocial"), anyone trying to convert me to a religion, people who value making money now above saving resources/the environment so we can make money later
Interests: writing, music, psychology, history, astronomy, linguistics

Name: Gen (also LotRGenius, which is so terrible that I don't really go by it anymore --)

Gender: Female

Nationality: American (along with a terrible accent- this is why border states are bad! XD)

Fandoms: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, Star Trek (TNG, TOS, VOY), Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, Green Rider, Discworld, Chronicles of Narnia, Sherlock Holmes

Hobbies: Reading, writing, drawing (oh my!), listening to music (I listen to music from the twenties to the seventies like no one's business XD), chemistry (I play with lasers, what?)

Likes: Humor, music, theatre, books (the real kind, none of that audiobook business), the internets, fanfiction, Star Trek (I'm currently on a binge), Matt Smith

>.>

Dislikes: Drama (you know what kind), bad writing, insects (OH GOD)

Other: I'm lotrgeniusgen on lj (please, feel welcome to laugh at the stupidity that is my username). I'm the one who gives away a panda that eats, shoots, and leaves.

Name: Barid, though I have been known to answer to a variety of other names including: Pendos, Darmok, Aran, Griff, and Derrick
Gender: Male
Nationality: American

Fandoms
Games: World of Warcraft, Mario, Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Resident Evil, Team Fortress 2, Portal, more Legend of Zelda

Books: The Wheel of Time, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (1st, 2nd and final), Stephen King, Dragonlance, Discworld

TV: Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (2003), Yu-Gi-Oh, Family Guy, the Simpsons, Star Trek TNG & Voyager

Movies: Moulin Rouge, Silence of the Lambs series, Chronicles of Riddick series, The Godfather

Hobbies
Videogames, Anime, Theatre, Music, Roleplay (mostly tabletop), Reading, Crossword Puzzles

Likes
Neshomeh, bacon, back massages, cooking shows, being Evil, talking a lot, creating characters, good het (and good slash to a lesser extent)

Dislikes
Work, people who always have to be right, anti-climactic endings, "lol", stupid people

Other
You will only find me as Barid in the PPC. On various other websites (DeviantArt being one example) I am diceanddagger (a reference to the Wheel of Time series). My PPC LJ is RC1986.

Well, I'm going to take your format and modify it slightly, 'cause it works and it's easy. {= )

Name: Neshomeh
Gender: Female
Age: 25
Nationality: American
Fandoms (copied from my wiki page): Animorphs, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (2003), Discworld, Dragonriders of Pern, Farscape, Firefly/Serenity, Fullmetal Alchemist, Harry Potter, Heroes, House, M.D., Jekyll & Hyde (book and musical), Lord of the Rings, Phantom of the Opera (Leroux, Kay, and Webber), Young Wizards, etc. I'll also add Sharpe, because while it's not a major fandom of mine, it IS an awesome one. ^^ I should add How to Train Your Dragon, too, 'cause that movie is made of win and one of the PPCs I'm working on is set there.

Hobbies: St. Dymphna's Academy tops the list right now. It's awesome and anyone who likes role-playing who isn't already there should join up when the next game-year starts. Shockingly, my hobbies include role-playing (online and tabletop). They also include writing, reading, drawing, drinking tea, and listening to music. I sing, but I haven't been able to join a group since I moved, which is really sad.

Likes: Barid, tea of almost any kind, cats, chocolate, long walks on the beach humor, things making sense, making things make sense, music, learning about new things.

Dislikes: The corporate system, bad writing, bad science, people who don't think before speaking/hitting "send", people who whine about being inferior, especially while exhibiting no signs of willingness to improve; sudden loud noises.

Other: I go by Neshomeh pretty much everywhere--deviantART, ff.net, Fiction Press, Photobucket, probably others. There are a few exceptions, though: on Gaia Online I'm Neshomehsoul because someone was actually using Neshomeh when I got there; on Neopets (where I don't really go anymore) I'm Neshomeh_soul because my original account got deleted for a stupid reason; and on YouTube, it's not me. I don't have a YouTube account. My contact information, should you want it, is on my wiki page. A lot of the information in this post is on my wiki page, too, in case you want to look it up in the future. It would be nice if everyone's information were on their wiki pages in case people wanted to look them up in the future. *hint hint*

~Neshomeh

Name: Cassie Cameron-Young (yes, that's my RL name as well, I never thought up a better username when I joined the Board and now I'm stuck with it XD)
Gender: Female
Nationality: British (English if you want to get specific)
Fandoms: LOTR, Discworld, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Redwall, the Belgariad/Malloreon/Elenium/Tamuli series, Earth's Children, Chobits
Hobbies: Writing (especially character exploration pieces and interviews), reading, listening to music, chatting to my friends, occasionally playing Runescape or trying my hand at drawing
Likes: good fanfic, IM RPs, chocolate, putting on music and pretending to be a rock star, swimming, musicals
Dislikes: Noisy neighbours, tea, mushrooms, my sister in Twifan mode, glaringly easy-to-correct mistakes in writing, spiders
Other: My main LJ is cassie5squared and my PPC LJ is c5sppcagents. Friend me if you like. :)

Name: doctorlit (Doug)
Gender: male
Nationality: American...IN AMERICA
Reads: classic literature, Stephen King, Kingdom Keepers, Left Behind, anything Sci-Fi/Horror really
Plays: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Pokémon, Halo, Assassin's Creed, the Lego movie games, Singstar, a little bit of Fire Emblem
Watches: nothing anymore, since Lost ended and Heroes got canceled; would watch SNL, but it's on too late.
Listens to: game soundtracks, musical soundtracks, Paramore, Disneymania
Webcomics: Order of the Stick, Candi, Brawl in the Family, What Birds Know, Jack, A Girl and Her Fed, Head Trip; also Red vs Blue
Other websites: active on deviantART, YouTube, Bulbapedia, FF.net, all under doctorlit
Contact: email (keyoflit@yahoo.com) and AIM (which is either doctorlit or my email again, I forget how that works)

...cos I live with you, but here we go anyway.

Name: Bridget
Gender: Female
Nationality: Yorkshire all the way, or English if I must
Fandoms: Narnia and ST:XI at the moment. Various others in the past
Hobbies: RuneScape, reading, rum, and crochet
Likes: Tea, people making me tea, cheesy bacon beans, Sims 2, Civ 4, books, slash
Dislikes: Going outside, a great variety of -isms, arrogance, het, abuse of English, overpriced beer
Other: I'm Brid Stokes on RuneScape, and I never deliberately try to offend people - take note in the Lounge as I am often drunk in there.

Looks fun, I'll give it a shot, and it'll give you folks a chance to know me:

Name: Opinioned Angel
Gender: Female
Nationality: American
Fandoms: MANY, like Digimon, Tales of Symphonia, Kingdom Hearts, Wicked, The Simpsons, Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Danny Phantom, Redwall, Generator Rex, Ben 10, Red VS Blue, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go…
Likes/Hobbies: Good fanfiction, doing my own thing, chocolate, anything Japanese related, anime/cartoons, manga/comic books, pretty much anything fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural-based, websurfing, reading, writing, drawing, watching TV, sleeping, listening to music, daydreaming.
Dislikes: Fan Dumb, Twilight, crazy fans, Mary Sues, unfair character bashing(especially when it's done just for a preferred pairing), child/animal abuse, tweenies, bad guys who get off without being punished, misogynists/sexists, injustice, the way kid TV stations are being run nowadays... basically, a lot of things tick me off, and I have a VERY short fuse.

I'm gonna copy your format, though. Because of the unimaginative.

Name: Silikat, or Laura if you want the real one.
Gender: Female
Nationality: Very English
Fandoms: Doctor Who, Torchwood, Cats, Harry Potter, Wicked, Les Miserables, Mario games, and various Disney things I can neither keep track of or give up on.
Hobbies: Reading and writing (obviously), gaming, watching DVDs so many times I can recite them, occasionaly RuneScaping, TvTropes lurking and watching YouTube videos.
Likes: Bacon, cheese, my iPod, musicals, reading, quoting Harry Potter/Doctor Who/the Simpsons on random occasions, eating.
Dislikes: Hyperactive fangirls, looking fat, anything OOC without a good reason, TvTropes ruining my life, being younger than almost everyone I know.
Other: Online, I'm either Silikat or haynesy2008 (except on RuneScape, where I'm Witchi L) My LJ is silikat_lj, if anyone cares. If any Cats, Doctor WHo or Torchwood fans want to check out my FF.net account, that's Silikat too.

Name: raffitz (My real name is Rafael)
Gender: Male
Nationality: Portuguese
Fandoms: Doctor Who, Stargate (All of them), Harry Potter, Bleach, Artemis Fowl, Chronicles of the Emerged World, Inheritance cycle, Star Trek (from The Motion Picture to XI, and from TNG to DS9), ...
Hobbies: Reading (both original and fan fiction), writing fanfics, watching TV series, playing The Sims 2, The Sims 3, Garry's Mod, watching vlogs on Youtube.
Likes: Chocolate, chips, sarcasm, Vlogbrothers, nerimon, italktosnakes.
Dislikes: bad sarcasm, fish, peas.
Other: My twitter username is raffitz, my Youtube username is raffitz and my Dailybooth username is raffitz (Yay for variety).

A:tLA fan here! I apply the same mindset to this as I do to my fanning (hurray for coining new meanings for existing words?) of Supernatural: I trust the creators. They did well the first time, they have always done remarkably well. I trust their ability to make this cool. Therefore, it deserves every bit of benefit of the doubt I can give it.

Actually, I'm pretty happy to hear that they're doing a sequel, and that they're doing something entirely new with it! I'd be far more worried if they were trying to follow around the children of the first gang. I can't think of any good example of that. Can you guys?

At first glance, I admit I was a little concerned with how this new series was described. "Hot-headed and independent" are hardly original descriptions for a main female character. *gestures towards his own PPC character list*

After some thought, however, I'm convinced that the new Avatar series should be something to be gleefully anticipated. My reasons are thus:

-- New characters. The story of the Gaang has pretty much been told. While it might be a little interesting to see how their lives progressed, an entirely new cast of characters allows for new situations or stories to be told.

-- Korra, the new Avatar. Her personality, while hardly original (if the press release is to be believed 100%), serves a marked contrast to Aang's typical cheerful mood. Plus, now we have a contemporary Avatar, rather than one that is disconnected by the present by 100 years. If the picture is anything to go by, Korra is older than Aang was during the first show. I'd quite like to see a more mature Avatar (not for that reason! Get your minds out of the gutter!).

-- The suggested storylines about city crime and anti-bending attitudes fit in with the general maturity set by the first series. I want to see how said topics are handled.

-- She already knows three of the four types of bending. Good! That means we don't have to watch more gorram training montages with fire, earth, and water. The first series had plenty of those, thank you!

-- Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko (the original creators of the first series) are heading up this project. Rather them than some fan trying to redo all of the classic bits. They know what's been done, so hopefully they'll try to explore new territory and create new conflicts.

-- Steam punk is kinda cool.

I'll be looking forward to its release.

Only seventy years, and Aang is already dead? :/ We've already had several people living for over a hundred years with no problems, so why did Aang kick the bucket so early? Did someone murder him or something? And if so, how did they manage to bump off the Avatar?

Really, this makes me SO DAMN HAPPY. I have plenty of faith in the creators to pull a kickass, strong, non-Sueish, new and above all, INTERESTING character off, and a whole bunch of supporting characters. The old series had lots of dark stuff in it, so the whole rising-crime thing doesn't make me twitch, and I just love the idea of seeing what's happened to the world after the series ends. And there will be more Avatar squee-squee-squee-squee-squee!

...Please tell me I'm not the only one on a total fangirl high? Please?

...I really wanted to know what everyone thinks about this, especially since sequels are (usually) not as good as the original, especially one as well-crafted as Avatar: The Last Airbender was.

And there's also the matter of the next Avatar herself. Ever since I found out that characters I liked/tolerated are generally considered (by fans) to be... uh... unlikable, I've been somewhat paranoid about new series. (And as much as I like TVTropes, it hasn't exactly helped in some ways either...)

But hey, maybe I'm wrong. I'll just have to wait and see.

I'm forcing myself to rein in my cynicism. I don't know how they can follow such a great act. Will the characters be as good? Will the story be as rich? I honestly don't know.

As long as this does not become TeenageWasteland!Avatar, I am willing to entertain the general concept. What this depends on is execution...

Which means I'll extend my feeble patience to it, I guess. I am getting weird mixed feelings from this, but I find myself demanding proof of them and from a cursory glance I can't justify my leeriness.

So I guess I'll just make some tea and--

70 years, huh? I guess Iroh is dead.

Well, that just sucked the happiness out of this series prospect. No Iroh? No Sokka? Boo. It's going to suck.

I've just recently discovered the full extent of my obsession with the show.

While I agree that those are typical Canon!Sue characteristics, the first show also handled what could be considered other Sue-cliches (i.e. dead/missing parents, spirited kids doing cool things with special powers) very well indeed. Even Zuko's angsting isn't too bad at the worst of times.

I have become a little paranoid as well, with all the badfic I've seen in other fandoms, but this is one continuum I'm more than prepared to give the benefit of the doubt until I can decide for myself.

And if fearless, independent, passionate Miss Korra does turn out to be a Sue, well, I'll just watch the first series over again. And possibly again.

... that girl has Canon!Sue written all over her face...

I'd be happy to volunteer my dedicated pair of Slashers, Dana Trent and Tarian Toran. They are on the experienced side; Dana's a PPC veteran and has been DBS since 2001 (giving her a slightly amusing indifference to slash by now), but Tarian's been in the DBS for a little under two years and still gets very flustered and acts like a total newbie at times.

I'd be willing to co-write, though it depends how you wanna do it. My personal preference is Gdocs, but if you really don't like that idea we can work around it.

I'm also very good with the Potterverse in general, so if any canon queries come up I should be able to help.

A very enjoyable read and an exciting cliffhanger. Hope Lee is all right.

And poor Lee! Well, poor Ian, really, since Lee is out of it and doesn't currently have a clue what's happening...

Don't you hate it when they plagiarize half the book and then stick their Sue into it? It's bad enough when their plot has holes you could fly the Enterprise through; worse when their plot is just plain stolen.

If my vote counts?

As a PG that isn't around any more, real life has me working long hours and giving me no rest.

Good Luck to the new PGs!

Leto

Nuh-uh, not me.

Seriously, I'm just a lurker these days. I haven't got any missions written at all. I'm terrible at making decisions. I don't like disappointing people.

Please... not me?

That is, VM, Ansela, and Makari. Depending, of course, on who actually accepts their nomination.

I also second Sedri. I am not dead, nor am I going anywhere, but sometimes I do like to do other things, y'know?

~Neshomeh

Also, I'm still here! And not planning on going anywhere! But Real Life does get to me sometimes, and keeps me away from the Board for days at a time.

Though probably only if she wants it.

Ansela sounds like a good idea, also. Responsible people ftw.

... and I think I shall second the nomination for Ansela.

Assuming both want it, of course.

I agree with VM.

I'd also like to nominate Makari and Ansela.

VM's nomination. I think she'll make a great PG and look forward to her joining the hallowed ranks or whatnot.

Elcalion, whimsical

... that anyone chosen to be a PG has a fifty percent chance of getting reclaimed by real life or comes across other issues that make visiting the board less likely within a year after nomination.

It's the reason we keep needing new PG's, but it also seems kind of cruel on the person(s) that get(s) nominated.

Have you a reasonably worked out backstory for these agents? Is their transition from your unpublished fic to the PPC coherent and workable? If the answer to these questions is yes, then it's thunderbirds are go.

Agent Miah Arthur is a character originally from a fic that I deleted about 13 years ago. When I deleted the fic, I rescued the character to use as an online avatar, and eventually she ended up here. She was a bit Sue-ish in the original story, which I realized, although I didn't know what the term for that was at the time. Anyway, she put her time in de-Sueifying while she was nothing but an avatar, and is now very glad to have a world to inhabit again. :D

Agent Unger is a D&D 3.5 half-elf Barbarian (went for a bit of the ridiculous there) that is based in the world of the game that we last played here.

Agent Logan is lifted more-or-less wholesale from an original fiction/ alternate-history fic/series I've had kicking around for ten years or so. Actually, I'd take that as a "yes", given the number of agents that have similar backgrounds.

One of my Agents, Amelia Keaton, is from an unpublished original fiction of mine. Well, at least her home background/ setting is. Much like yourself, I'll be fleshing everything out for NaNo this year, but she's going to be one of the main characters. It's going to be either a preternatural-based crime novel or a preternatural-based spy novel-- one of the two, since I'm going to go with the whole "ex-private detective" bit of her history like I did here.

One of my agents is a recicled main character from a remake of one old fic of mine, that I never wrote. The funny thing is that another remake of the same thing is in the works, and so another very similar character, with even the same name, is around.

I have a couple of Agents from continua of mine that I've either written stuff for but never published, or made up around the character to explain them.

One of my own agents, Deuce, is from my unpublished original canon. I haven't gotten any flack for it so far.

There are agents from unpublished fics already--the "semi-fic blips" who are generally Sues or OCs from unpublished stories. So it's not at all a stretch to think that a character from unpublished original fiction might join the PPC.

Fair winds!

Welcome to the Board. Please deposit your sanity in the provided receptacle. *indicates bucket marked "Warg Fodder"* You shan't need it here. Also, here's a stupid sound effect. It is "BAKA BAKA BAKA". Use it well.

Have a mini mallorn tree.

Welcome to PPC. Here is a cookie - eat it within 2-3 days for maximum tasty-ness. =P

Welcome! Welcome, welcome, welcome - it's nice to meet you.

I'm going to dive right in and hand over The Links, which are traditionally given to all newbies along with our assortment of odd and oft-useless gifts, but which seem to have been forgotten lately.

The Link, if you don't know, are the lot of 'Go Read This Now Please' urls that we throw at every newbie since they actually do give Useful Information. In relative order of sensible-reading-ness, they are:

* The Original PPC Series, which we assume you've already read.
* The List of Killed Badfic, which will direct you to a large number of non-Original PPC Missions.

The Board:
* The Board Constitution
* The FAQ: For the Board

The Wiki:
* We have our very own PPC Wiki
* The very-important-to-read-before-requesting-Permission Permission article
* Our Guide To The PPC
* The Mission Writing Guide
* The Slash-Sporking Guide
* The FAQ: For Newbies.
When you are ready to edit the wiki, make sure to read Neshomeh's excellent editing tutorial.

And finally, but very usefully,
* The List of Everything PPC


Now that that's over, welcome! It's lovely to meet you, and don't worry - we don't bite. I look forward to getting to know you :)

Hi, I'm Makari Crow. Here, have a fire-retardant leash-and-harness set! Fits most brains. :)

I'm late to the party, as per usual, but I do hope you'll enjoy yourself here. ^^

Have a panda that eats, shoots and leaves.

Lovely to meet you, Makayla! Greetings, hail and well met, elen sila lumenn omentielvo, and several other similar phrases. I hereby present you with a bag of pebbles and a Random Shiny Object. Use them well in your defence of all things canonical.

Looking forwards to getting to know you too! :D


(Also, don't worry too much about the online/RL names thing; I've been using my real name for a couple of years here now and no crazy internet people have shown up at my door yet. :P )

Hello! Here's a Frying Pan of Doom^tm and a large supply of Bleeprin, just in case.

Hey Makayla! Have a pet cat. You may name her whatever you wish.
So, do you like cheese?

Have a gun. It'll be useful, if you are going to became an Agent.

Hello! Have a seventeen foot long, multicolored, wool, knit scarf (curly wig not included), and a bag of jelly babies.

Please use them IRresponsibly.

Welcome to this board! I've had fun on it so far, and I've not been here terribly long.

Have a hat. *presents hand-knit hat, crafted from the silky-soft spun fur of Cute Animal Friends*

I am not French, but I will welcome you in it.

I am also not an experienced boarder, but I'm going to welcome you, anyway. Enjoy your stay.

Have a...um...

*searches around a bit*

...this is pretty rock I found. At least, it'll be pretty once it's been polished a bit.

Welcome and regards,
Lleu Llaw Gyffes

Do not feed it sues.

Have an Infinite-Capacity carpetbag, chocolate, and a plover-cage in case Tawaki shows up.

Welcome to the Board! Have some chocolate and enjoy your stay here!

Please enjoy this silk top hat as a welcoming gift.

Help yourself to some lembas, specially prepared by the House Elves from Hogwarts!

Naw, never mind, I'm cracking up anyhow, In all senses of the word. Hello, Makaylax!

I am much to laaazy to post lynx to all the things you should visit, and I am positive someone else will, so I will just give you a big fuzzy scarf and call it a day. It is mainly electric blue, but there are other colors in there as well.

(Besides, I'm not 100% sure I remember how to post lynx on this thingy. How do you do this again...?)

I just realised that I said very little actually about me for anyone to talk to me, so let me introduce myself, stealing the format from Ansela in one of the posts below

Name: Zoe McCullagh-George
Gender: Female
Nationality: British
Age: 19
Currently: English Language 2nd Year Uni student
Fandoms: Lord of the Rings (sporadically active), Harry Potter (ibid), Stargate: SG1+Atlantis, Criminal Minds
Some Anime Fandoms: Ouran, XXXHolic, Naruto, FMA, Eyeshield 21
Hobbies: Reading and writing, usually fanfic, but occasionally original fiction manages to slip its way in there.
Likes: anthropology in a purely casual sense, languages, anime, slash (well-written, of course), bouts of insanity, thesauruses, chatting to new people, dancing to dodgy 80s music, random Wii parties!
Dislikes: Bad grammar, shocking abuse of the English Language, anything with six legs coming within my personal space bubble, buttons....
Envies: people with dedication, masters of prose.
Other: my lj account is illezabeth, feel free to add ^^

Just so you know, there is something to be said for the "leaving it for a week" idea. When you come back, even without a beta, you're likely to reread yourself and want to edit quite a lot. Don't be in such a hurry! Leave it to sit. The mission, and the audience, will still be here when you get back.

However, seeing as I've gotta spend the evening packing, I'm afraid patience is in order. Botheration.

Though like the others, I'd like to know the fandom.

I'd say sure right off the bat, however a) I dunno if I know the fandom and b) depending on time zones, our time frames might be totally different? I'm GMT -8, so... yeah.

I don't know if you'll get any other volunteers, but defs having the fandom in the request would help -- it's a lot easier to read a mission (especially for canon consistency) if you know what's going on -- and if you don't, it probably is better to just be patient. The document won't go away, the internet (probably) won't explode during the next week, and it can only be better for the wait. After all, it's gone this long already, eh?

For what it's worth, I look forward to seeing the finished product. ^^

Fair winds! And watch out for my Agents during races.

Believe me, it's useful. How so, you ask? Well, it opens doors. Other than that, I'm not sure.

;p Nice to meet you!

I bring you welcome and greetings and a nice rock I found. I'm going to have to pick up some more if I keep giving them away like this. If you're interested, I've got a bit of House Roac hot chocolate, too, that I've been saving for a special occasion.

Welcome and regards,
Lleu Llaw Gyffes

Welcome! Hope you enjoy your stay.

Please take my meagre offerings of honey mead, Bleeprin (definitely a PPC must) and some chocolate bars to get you through the day x

*The Original Series, minus The Dark Elf.
*A partial list of killed badfics.
*Missing works that were backed up elsewhere. Some were recovered from the Wayback Machine, others from copy-and-paste files. The Selmorwai mission was actually recovered from my youngest sister's file of random PPC missions.

The Board:
*The Board Constitution
*Board FAQ

Other wiki pages of note:
*A must-read article on Permission.
*A basic guide.
*Mission-Writing Guide.
*Slash-Sporking Guide.
*FAQ for Newbies
*I don't know how much experience you have with editing wikis, but just in case...

And one more, very general link.

Welcome to the Board. Please deposit your sanity in the provided receptacle. *indicates bucket marked "Warg Fodder"* You shan't need it here. If your head a splode while you're here, it's probably your fault.

Welcome to the PPC!

I can sympathize with the movie thing. I hate it when movie-makers ruin good stories. *glares at Peter Jackson*

Hello! Have a seventeen foot long, multicolored, wool, knit scarf (curly wig not included), and a bag of jelly babies.

Please use them IRresponsibly!

Have a gun. Just in case you find a Sue, they are quite nasty opponents.

Have a panda that eats, shoots and leaves!

I am curious to know, what pair of books are you referring to?

Anyway, have a mating pair of Dodos, Passenger Pigeons and Moas!

Have some NM&NMs (boarder M&Ms) and a replica of Sting.

Welcome to the PPC! Have some chocolate, and enjoy your stay!

And other such phrases of welcome and inclusion. Good to have you here, and I hope you'll have fun. What fandoms are you into?

Ad an official Welcome Gift, I present you with a bag of pebbles and a Random Shiny Object. Use them well in the defence of Canon.

Don't feed it Sues.

I'm actually in the middle of editing the fics (I started when I was made aware of the similarities between the SSU and the PPC.) If there's anything people want to me to change I would appreciate the input. I’ve seen some good ideas here (like using visors that spot sues instead of the scanners) but I won’t use the ideas without permission from the people who created them. I just want to say that I did NOT steal the neutralizers from you guys, it was from Men in Black and I know it’s not original and its one of things I plan to change. I realise the story is weird and inconsistent, again, something I’m going to go back and change. If anyone gives me ideas I will happily credit them back to the people who made them. Despite the impression I may have given, I don’t like taking credit for stuff that’s not mine.

Also, I just want to say that I got a number of private messages from people who wanted to write their own sue slayer stories after reading about the SSU, so I think you can expect a bit of a boom of stories in this nature. I know it can all be traced back to you guys, the pioneers of sue slayers. Like how the Wolf Man was wonderful and original and is pretty much the parent movie of all werewolf movies since. I think you should be proud of yourselves for creating a new genre and wanted to let you know that I’m not the only one writing about sue slayers (apart from you guys) and I have read a fic about ANOTHER sue slaying organisation in the Maximum Ride section. The PPC and the SSU are not the only ones.

As for charging the sues with their crimes – this was something that was pointed out to me as a similarity. Fair enough. I would like to point out that this wasn’t standard procedure for the SSU, Alex and Alice did it once or twice because they thought it was funny. This is something that I can stop doing if you like. If people want something changed I would appreciate it if you tell me, really.

Or affiliate? Or just become "hey-look-let's-go-swap-stories" type friends? Or- ?
Personally, I don't really mind. Although some people could point out it is really, really similar to PPC.

You guys are being too harsh. There's only so many ways you can do the basic "We fight and kill Mary Sues, etc" dealie.

In other words, there's no need to reinvent the wheel, or get on other people's cases for 'similar' ideas. There are dozens and dozens of badfic fighting societies out there and only so many possible variations, of course there's going to be similarities, especially if she did read PPC stuff. There are only so many ways you can kill a Sue, so many way you can make canon characters forget (pills similar to Torchwood's retcon, MiB neuralyzers, a careful bit of brain trauma, or just kill that fic's version), only so many ways you can watch the action, and so forth.

There's this 'Lemon Fighters' fic out there that has agents, crappy budgeting, departments, and sarcasm and adversarial friendliness between two partners who alternate between picking up the slack for each other, and a fondness for wordplay. It's from early 2001.

Or how about those ACMSES people? They have a Canon Cannon just like we do. Except it does things different. And they have Plothole Generator, which hm. Seem to be Remote Activators under a different name, basically.

Or that group in the Artemis Fowl fandom, which is a bunch of teenaged girls fighting to protect canon.

Oh. My. Gosh.

I think CreativeSprite has made enough changes and has made what she's doing enough of her own thing that us getting on her case about it is just showing a bunch of people who are overly sensitive to other people using the same equipment in a different playground.

After all, we don't give every single PPC agent an animal counterpart to help with CAFs. Or envelopes saying what roles they're supposed to pretend to be and take up while they're in the fic. We don't do multiple chapter fics for missions. There's a continuing storyline, as compared to our favorite way of doing things with a formula. You're all being silly by focusing only on the similarities; when you bring the differences in it's a whole 'nother ballgame.

So it's that, or, y'know, you lot are feeling threatened by it for some reason. Which is really silly, given her reply to Araeph. She's clearly aware of the similarities, but she wouldn't offer to change things if she didn't care; there's respect, which means she doesn't want to offend us.

And for you who are crying about her spelling and grammar? Go reread TOS. Then try and tell me that Jay and Acacia were perfect writers. With a straight face. Hell, go and tell me any of our stuff is perfect with wonderful spelling and grammar when it's put up without a beta going over it. You can manage that, right? Oh, wait, no.

Suck it up. We're not the only ones doing this, it's not just our idea, you're all getting whiny and defensive over something for no good reason.

The very first quote has a grevious punctuation error; any decent beta would have caught the extra apostrophie. That alone makes me think that this 'organsation' is both careless and hypocritical. Not maliciously so, but nonetheless. I don't like it.

Certainly, if someone without any knowledge of the PPC were to create a Sue-Slaying organisation, there are some things that would follow logcially - using in-canon weapons and avoiding interaction with canons - but the use of neuralysers, the style of the charge lists, and the "own 'world'" outside of any fandom are too specific to be natural coincidence.

My impression therefore is that this author read something from the PPC, loved it, but didn't like either our community restrictions or Permission-getting process and decided to strike out on their own. If she's being honest and encountered the PPC later, then I don't approve of her leaving her story up the way that it is - in her shoes, I would instantly take it down or heavily edit - but that's me and my determination not to offend anyone.

That said, I'm not inclined to be nasty about it. If we did present her with a list of things 'too similar that we want her to change' I imagine it would be both very long and poorly recieved, but I'm not ready to write to the FFN admin and try to get her taken down. That's unnecessary and uncalled for. I would rather that she either did some thorough editing and adjusted 'her' ideas so it's not such an obvious parallel, or apply for Permission and then adjust her work so it conforms to our standards - but, again, I don't see that happening.

In short, I'm not happy, but I'm not about to start a fight. In lieu of some very generous offers on her part, I'm inclined to leave it alone.

If you would take her at her word, here are some things that you could suggest:

It would be nice if the 'walking trees' were just background dressing, and the 'screams from the lower parts of the building' are eliminated. As for the 'neuralizors', ask her to use darts filled with Amnesia Potion instead. As for the CAD-like scanners, change them into visors that allow the wearer to see Sue Auras.

Before I knew the PPC, I liked to write little adventures going around resolving horrible fandom issues and battling Mary Sues. Except in my stuff Mary Sues took more of a 'hive-mind aspects of a single Eldrich Abomination' feel to them. In fact, I still like to write them, and I'll be writing one with the help of a friend that actually includes PPC themes and stuff in it.

I think wanting to kill Sues is pretty commonplace...

Idk about stealing the idea, though... *shrug*

"Sue Slaying" and "Killed Badfic", and this is where I found the first PPC named results:
"Sue Slaying: At the bottom of the 4th page.
"killed badfic": First result.
"Badfic Killing": Once again first result.

My point being that a basic "Sue Slaying" search (the most likely search) wouldn't really bring us up unless the searcher has a longer attention span than most googlers.

Although I agree that a polite note might be helpful.

If we're generous, I guess we could write it off as, "Snarky minds think alike."

Seems like a run of the mill cheap knockoff to me.

There are an uncomfortable number of similarities.

Something else that worries me is the number of spelling errors and misused words. This is similar enough that anyone that has read a PPC story is going to think of the PPC when reading this, and she has some rather obvious problems with SPAG. Basically, if she is going to imitate us that closely, then her standards shouldn't reflect poorly on us. (Kind of pretentious sounding, I realize, but it's still my opinion.)

It's obvious she did steal, whether on purpose or not, and I think we have the right to ask her to change some things, like the neuralizors and CADs -- especially the CADs, which you couldn't make up independently. Charge lists make too much sense to complain about.

I think you should either ask her to change and/or tell her she has to put a disclaimer that she is not associated with the PPC.

steal it on purpose, but there are far too many similarities for my comfort... a building "not in any canon", walking trees, a fully stocked armoury, rules about using canon-appropriate weaponry, no contact with the Canons unless necessary, neuralyzers, charges, ending on "being annoying", devices that sound suspiciously like CADs... and that's just from the quotes.

Maybe they can be left alone for now, but if things take any sort of serious downhill turn/they're associated with us/both, I think we might really have to contact them and ask them to knock it off. It reads more like someone's trying to do an unofficial spinoff without having to go through the process of getting Permission - not that I'm saying they are, mind. That's just the sort of impression it gives me.

I'll take the mini-Balrog for the Adoptions Agency unless somebody else wants to take him. Aw, he's a cute little galaxy-travelling mini. And he even has his own fireproof towel!

An agent I'm still developing is a Twilightverse vampire whose main source of food is Sues. In Twilight canon, the color of a vampire's eyes varies depending on whether they've drank and what they've drank. Vampires who haven't drunk in a while have black eyes, vampires who recently drank human blood have red eyes, and those who recently drank animal blood have golden eyes. I decided that whenever this vampire agent drinks Sue blood, his eyes turn purple.

That would explain the Twilight-verse vampires, wouldn't it?

Glittering vampires? Am I the only one who associated this with Twilight?
Maybe that's why Edward sparkles in the sunlight!

I've also got a couple of questions:

1. Can I make my new sample a piece based on killing a nonexistant badfic and recruiting from it?

2. Could an agent be a former Bit-Character? I see lots of Former Sues, but never a former Bit Character.

3. I've got a few skeletal concepts, I'd like some feedback on which you'd like to see evolve into fully fleshed out characters:

Imperial Guardsman:
Honest Emperor-fearing citizen
Dark Heresy Character
Lines about leveling up?
Uses IG equipment and the crit table

Ash:
Wilden
D&D
4th Wall Breaker
Writing a book on Sue-types (Suedex)
Being my character ingame, I'm thinking about him being very confused about the nature of the world. He is me, I'm the Author, therefore is he the Author by extension?

Conjoiner (Revelation Space Sequence):
Detailed summary about Conjoiners can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factions_in_Revelation_Space#Conjoiners
Arrogant, believes her own tech is superior
Has the CAD in her head as an implant (causes some tension the tech dept (the actual name escapes me))
Scathingly sarcastic

Malifuax Harvester
Found a useful way to recharge his Soulstones
Coldly logical
There's no summary of these guys online, so I'll sum up what's known about them here. They get a small boxout section in the Malifaux (http://wyrd-games.net/) rulebook explaning that they kill to recharge Soulstones, which are the source of magic in this setting.
This one was harvesting when the stone turned a strange 'urple colour. Enter PPC.


If the answer to 1. is "yes" I'm thinking of making either the Harvester or the Guardsman the newbie.

The idea behind posting agent bios is that you have some idea what you are going to write, and that we have some idea that you know what makes a character not a Sue.

We don't need to know every single detail about your agents. At least not through a bio. Like with real people, characters' perspective on life can change due to the things that happen to them. There is no need to post a new bio if there is a change in a character's circumstances, like your knife thowing agent decides to become a gun slinger because they kept poking themselves in the leg.

That is interesting information for a mission/interlude of course, and should most definitely go into the agent's bio on the wiki. On the board there is not much use for it once you have gotten permission.

Congrats on that, by the way.

A friend of mine linked me to it a few days ago. I fell utterly and joyously in love somewhere around the second strip.

It's hilarious; as a Sue-basher and a Trekkie both, I have to recommend it very highly indeed.

Unfortunately the ads have made me tempted to buy the book, because yes, I have started stalking the page for updates.

Thanks for sharing :)

...quite funny, actually. Pity there are only seventeen of them so far.

This... this is quite incredible. It's like some horrible comic book that 90's Kid would probably really enjoy... I keep hearing all the quotes in his voice. And then I'm just getting used to the level of weird and disturbing and it throws something completely new.

Should I know what a Groinsaw is? Do I want to?

Though that line about the book is actually sort of funny.

Gyeh?! Gurgle--choke--BGAAAAAH!

My brain just broke.

The best way to describe this fic is "Michelangelo got high on cocaine and shrooms--simultaneously--then timetraveled into the future, still stoned out of his mind, where some fool showed him Star Wars and Harry Potter and got him even /more/ high on synthetic chemicals unavailable in his own time. Eye of Argon may or may not have been involved. The resulting combination caused his head to explode, and the disembodied brain matter coagulated into a consciousness that then possessed the Internet. The Internet being the Internet, the consciousness lost what coherence it had left and wrote the fanfiction."

...Wow. That almost sounded like something that would have been in the fic itself, minus cosmic Lovecraftian forces that bleed lasers and Tyrannosaur-bear hybrids on hovercrafts. With chainsaws for eyes.

Is it disturbing that I can even come up with this concept?

I don't know who this author is, but I like him! This is like My Immortal if Tara Gillesbie actually knew how to write!

The bit about the awesome!book was by far the best.

Am I the only one who was reminded of this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KevzcHUUKAY

Well, the PPC is notorious for insanity, I guess...

At least, I suppose, there is an actual grasp of grammar here but... I think I may have preferred it if it hadn't; if had been gibberish I wouldn't have had to understand any of it.

My mind hurts from trying to compute mental images.

Reminds me of Axe Cop.

PFFT. So lulzy.

If you'll pardon my chanspeak.

That is crackfic in the most literal meaning of the word. Where did that come from?

It's... so... Horrible and nonsense. This one was Pink Stuff drunk, seriously.

I'll lend some Bleeprin to agents brave enough to kill it.

*Laughs uncontrollably.*

This is awesome.


"Harry slammed his book shut. It wasn't really a book, because the pages were made of lasers and the words were made of headless women making godless love to dragons made out of motorcycles, but it was still reading"

It makes no sense, but it's so funny I just don't care :D

Hmm. This looks like a whole slew of...

Big Lipped Alligator Moments!

((For those of you who don't know what a Big Lipped Alligator Moment is, watch this explanation.))

...what even.

I don't —

— what.

I was just looking at Architeuthis' first mission, and I noticed something that jumped out at me (not literally. This is the PPC, after all--you never know).

"...concerns of the PPC include Transdimensional Hopping (wherein the fanfic writer sends herself and/or other people into another dimension..."

I've never seen any missions regarding this, so it confuses me. Would this mean that the author herself is in the canon, rather than a Suvian stand-in as in the case of OC-fics? In that case, would the Agents have to return the (neuralyzed) author to World One without killing her? I don't know what our policy is about World One inhabitants invading and mucking with canon, but it seems to me that the Flowers would frown upon the killing of real people as opposed to parasitic mockeries.

No, not all Sues are killed. Yes, there are ex-Sue agents.

To elaborate, the first thing to realize is that not every Suefic is the target of a mission. We don't go after the mediocre ones; only the ones that really look to be damaging things, either not knowing or, more often, not caring that they're doing anything wrong. So, the moderately-well-written yet uninteresting Sues go free. To put it another way, any badfic, Sue or otherwise, has to be bad enough to make an entertaining mission. If she's got decent SPaG and has a semi-plausible reason for getting into Legolas' pants, there's no point in PPCing her, because there wouldn't be much for the agents to snark about and, moreover, nothing much to put on the charge list. This is why we have charge lists, in fact. A kill has to be justified by canon-warping.

Second, there have been occasions of one of two things happening on a mission. One, in one of Architeuthis' Intelligence reports, the Sue under observation actually began to naturalize as the story went on. In other words, she became less of a Sue on her own, and didn't require intervention. (I'd like to see this happen more, if anyone can find stories like that.) Two, as mentioned, sometimes a borderline Sue is recruited. This doesn't usually happen in "active" missions, though--usually it's a backstory, and the Sue in question is one that a PPCer wrote themselves in their younger years. I'm sure people can give you plenty of examples, but the one coming to my mind right now is Agent Diocletian.

I think the ACMSES disposes of their (invented for the purpose) Sues by dropping them into confinement somewhere. The problem I see with that, though, is how can you possibly contain them all in any kind of humane way? In any case, most of us don't see Sues as humans, or elves, or whatever they're claiming to be. Most often they're seen as a disease--and yes, it is stated that the Sue needs to be killed for the canon to heal, just like a virus. That's why everything snaps back into place after the kill in TOS.

~Neshomeh

Long live Portal! Huzzah for Portal 2!

I especially like Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta-Prime. Re: Your Brains and Skullcrusher Mountain are good, too, and of course Still Alive is epically awesome, but CBP is among my favorites.

Creepy Doll threatens to give me nightmares, but it's a small price to pay. I have my Vocaloids if it gets too bad.

Geeky songs FTW!

Here's a video our Doctor Who fans may enjoy (or, more likely, have already heard).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGqrrmZXtqg&amp;videos=1MAc6o55ifw

I think I prefer the original mix, though - the counter-melodies and richer sounds of this one around the 1:30ish mark are nifty, but then there's an awkward transition at 1:55 and then they're never really resolved - it's basically back to the original mix at 2:30.

*needs to stop being a music critic*

It's nifty, though, and the cinematography is very well done.

Have a pet cat. You may name him whatever you wish.

I'm not experienced, either. Have a PPC t-shirt!

Since you already have several presents, and are going to get so many more you can't count them all, my present is a 'fairy box' from Ella Enchanted. Hey, don't give me that look- the book was pretty good even if the movie wasn't. And the box will expand to almost the size of a hot tub, or shrink to the size of a charm on a bracelet without damaging the contents. Good for keeping stuff.

Anyways, welcome! What fandom are you, again?

Not experienced, but well met, anyway. Have a nice cup of House Roac hot chocolate. It's delicious!

Regards and welcome,
Lleu Llaw Gyffes

Welcome, newbie! Have some chocolate and enjoy your stay here!

Welcome to the Board! Please deposit your sanity in the provided receptacle. *indicates bucket marked "Warg Fodder"* You shan't need it here. Also, here is the results of me slamming my forehead into the keyboard five times: y54rr0oe4 78.

Very useful stuff ;)

Have a panda that eats, shoots and leaves.

Just don't bring it through airport security. And keep it away from any heat source.

I'm Makari, nice t'meet you. Here, a gift: an adjustable, flame-retardant leash-and-harness set, sized to fit most brains. Just in case your mind decides it might like to wander.

May I inquire about your name? It looks like it might have an interesting story behind it.

Have a venomous arthropod of your choice!

Welcome to the Board! It's great to see new faces around. I hereby present you with a welcoming gift of a bag of pebbles and a Random Shiny Object. Use them well!

Welcome aboard! Allow me to be the first to present you with two things (well, one thing and a list): A Frying Pan of Doom^tm, and...

The List 'O Links! (snerched from Tawaki)


*The Original Series
*A partial list of killed badfics.

The Board:
*The Board Constitution
*Board FAQ

Other wiki pages of note:
*A must-read article on Permission.
*A basic guide to the PPC itself.
*Mission-Writing Guide
*Slash-Sporking Guide.
*FAQ for Newbies
*I don't know how much experience you have with editing wikis, but just in case...

And one more, very general link.

Hello! Have a seventeen foot long, multicolored, wool, knit scarf (curly wig not included), and a bag of jelly babies.

Please use them IRresponsibly!

Fair winds!

Do not feed it Sues.