Talk:PPC Wiki

Use this page to discuss design and content changes to the |main page. For general wiki discussion, please visit the Community Portal.

A suggestion: Under the heading of latest mission releases there are a number of missions, but there was no real indication of how old these missions were. I'd like to suggest to add the date the missions are posted (to this list) between comment brackets (!--). Indemaat 12:26, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I like that suggestion. I'd also like to know if there's a set number of missions to be displayed, so that as each new one is added the last one drops off. As it stands, the list is getting a bit long and taking over the front page. Is it time for a clearing of the section, or should I just delete the bottom few? If there should be a set number, how many do people think we should have? I'd say five or six would be enough to give people the latest missions without overloading. Thoughts? Anamia 15:36, June 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think perhaps a flexible minimum limit of 5. Say, nothing older than 30 days, unless we have fewer than 5 that are less than 30 days old. That would allow missions to stay a reasonable amount of time, even during times like these where we have a lot of missions in a short period, and keep it from completely emptying out in times like around finals when we do not have a lot of missions.

I'd like to raise the query: what is wrong with using the Facemaker to make pictures of our Agents? If "portrait style" is what is wanted, which as I understand it is primarily the face, how does it violate that? And why should it matter exactly what image is used by somebody to portray their own characters?

Sorry if this sounds a bit sharp, but I prefer the Facemaker above all else for making images of my characters because I can make them look exactly the way I want them to, and my hackles have been raised by this sudden blanket ban.--Cassie5squared 20:10, June 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, the please-don't-use-Facemaker thing has been there for a really long time. The reason is that the ultra-closeup doesn't give as much information about the agent's appearance as a more zoomed-out image. Plus, even as a portrait, Facemaker is really limited. Artistically speaking, a good portrait at least shows the whole head, and often includes the chest and shoulders. Facemaker cuts everything off, like you're standing way, way too close to them. >.<
 * It would be okay to have the Facemaker pictures on your pages, since you really want to keep them, but it would be better if there were a full body picture as the primary image, so we can get the full picture. ~Neshomeh 21:09, June 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I know it's not my place to say, but I think she meant the sudden "Stop using the Facemaker" message in red on the main page, which makes it sound like it's been banned entirely. Sorry. KGarrett 21:11, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * That's because it has been banned entirely, what with people ignoring the original message which was also of a "Don't do that" nature. Just politely worded. JulyFlame 21:14, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * To clarify--would it still be OK to use Facemaker, if there were also a more zoomed-out shot of the agent on the page? Or would that be too many images and too much storage space to worry about?--Chaoticidealism 21:25, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * As I understand, Facemaker only has one view function, and cannot 'zoom' out. --JulyFlame 21:27, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * If you've got a Facemaker image up and want to keep it, that's fine, but adding more is not (as I read it). Also, it would be better to have an additional, non-Facemaker image that shows more of the agent as the primary image on the page. More than one image in an article is just fine. (I will add, however, that unused images should be marked for deletion.) ~Neshomeh 21:41, June 1, 2010 (UTC)

Two years?
And six months. Could the "The Wiki Has Been Online For Two Years!" please be changed? --Elemarth 19:42, June 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * I assume we'll change it when we hit the three-year mark. There's nothing wrong with it at the moment. ~Neshomeh 00:09, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Mini lists
People are always asking where to find lists of various types of minis, would it be alright to put the lists on the wiki? Maybe an Adoption page for each type of fiction, like a TV mini list page, a book mini list page, a movie mini list page, a comic mini list page, and a video game mini list page? Did I forget any? The list for minis that are already popular enough to have their own page, like mini Balrogs, could be added to the bottom of their page and just linked to the main page. I know not every person who has been maintaining the lists would want to re-list here, but it would be handy for newer missions and mini types, and maybe we could make a link on the appropriate page to where the lists that aren't on the wiki are located. I think this would be especially good for mini types that there aren't very many of them out there (like my mini-Wraith from the other day).

Issues
I've been noticing several things on here, that I want to address fully, rather than blasting on one or two pages.

For one, there's been a focus on narrowing the content that is present, rather than improving the general quality and content here. The wiki isn't intended to be limited. It's supposed to be a PPC treatment on a variety of characters, continua, ideas, and fandom terminology. It is supposed to be humorous and informational. A great deal of articles lately seem to be only focusing on the second, and then having humorous bits poorly tacked on as though they were a second thought, and barely making any sense with the whole article. If someone writes a thorough enough article, or works on making a set of articles related to some continua, it deserves to be here, rather than tossed off because of some sort of ill-begot idea that it should be relevant to all other pages.

Eliminating red links or pages that aren't linked elsewhere is lazy. Instead, there should be a focus on making the content here more easily visible on other pages, or creating them, rather than scrubbing them over and going 'Nope, weren't here".

For two, I want to suggest that we begin a revamp of the various pages here; we've been talking a great deal lately about 'not judging the writer for what's been written', and with that in mind, there are more than a few pages on here that are condescending, if not outright insulting. One, for example, is Fandom, where, for the portion for "Bad Fandom", we can see things like 'saying character X is a lesbian is stupid' and 'elves are immune to the cold is dumb' directly through the wiki links. Statements like 'This is what creators think the vast majority of fanon looks like sometimes. And they are absolutely right.' are also inappropriate, and insulting.

The Mary Sue page also needs revamping, with this sort of thing in mind; we say we're not sexist, so why are we doing things like propagating that being gay or being insecure and thus being made sympathetic (to the extreme of being out of character) is emasculating?

These aren't the only pages that have problems, these are just the ones I can think of right off the top of my head at the moment.

With that in mind, the FAQ pages should also probably be fixed, because right now as it is, they have a 'we are superior' mindset where the questions are whiny and the answers are smug; while they might be amusing for us to read, it also does not do us any favors.

A third thing I'd like to suggest is that we consider eliminating the Badfic Authors category (and the pages within) and the Slain Mary Sues category (again, including the pages within, except perhaps TOS ones). The first because of the whole 'judge the works by analysis, not the people who write them' thing, and the second because they are not our characters, and it is not our place to be writing all that up. -posted by July at 11:17, November 9, 2011 (UTC) I respectfully dissent. I was under the impression that the PPC wiki was intended to cover things the PPC has actually covered in missions, on the board, on the chat, or in other material. Thus, eliminating redlinks might be needed when links to pages that are about things that we haven't covered yet appear. To continue an allegory that was made to me, and to several others on the wiki, the Wiki is like the PPC's library: for the PPC's things. If the PPC hasn't covered it, it isn't ours yet. In my mind, this may mean not adding agent pages before they appear in a published work (as Neshomeh and I cleaned up massively last year), or it may mean not adding pages for continua and terminiology that have no missions, agents, or other materials directly associated. This does not 'narrow' content so much as prevent 'content that doesn't actually have to do with us yet.' There are other wikis for those things in the meantime: we're all here for the PPC, and what it's covered.
 * I have to agree with the last paragraph of this in particular. Picking out selected badfic authors makes it look like we're picking on them, to an extent, so we can point and laugh; even if they wrote Legendaries, that's still no reason for us to go "look at this person and the rubbish they came out with", because that has an implication of "aren't they stupid?" as well. And I've never understood why we need to have pages for Mary Sues. We get enough information about a Sue from the mission it dies/gets recruited in, and we don't write pages for slashwraiths or causes of crossovers or any other kinds of missions. The Mary Sue pages just reinforce the image everyone else has of us as Sue-hunters and nothing else. Cassie5squared 12:01, November 9, 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, while I do think the Badfic Authors catagory is superfluous, against PPC protocol on not picking on authors, and probably should be eliminated, I do not think the Slain Mary Sues catagory is. While yes, they are not our characters, most of the content on them is criticism of what happens in their badfic, and transcriptions of their charge lists from the missions that cover them. No information is (or should be! And if it is, this should be corrected!) any more offensive than what is covered in the missions, and as to the argument that they're not our characters and that we shouldn't write about or list them... there are plenty of missions that write more dialogue, actions, and drama concerning the Mary Sue being slain. How can it be that if actually writing more about a Mary Sue in the course of a mission is ok, but writing a transcription of their deeds is not? And what about linking to missions? Those write about characters that aren't ours, either. Should we not link to them either?

In regards to the wiki not being funny enough, I think that it's a community effort. If anybody doesn't feel a joke is funny, or if it irks them, they are free to change it, write more content, and be more funny. It can't be the responsibility of one writer to represent the PPC's humor, and if it is somehow that now by nature of the limited number of people editing the wiki... then that should be fixed! More editors! Stat!

Though I do agree the Mary Sue page needs to be a bit cleaned up. It reads currently as a lot of pasted quotations from various board/journal posts (is it?) and could stand to be focused a little: perhaps quoting those great huge essay blocks of text rather than just pasting them down.

Aster Corbett 13:30, November 9, 2011 (UTC)

{C I'd like to make a note of something that was on the Mary-Sue page until just recently (as in, until I removed it five minutes ago).

...Mary Sue's XY counterpart1 is called Gary Stu, Marty Stu, or Marty Sam; all of these are synonymous plays on the feminine blanket term.

1 = Please note that the term "masculine counterpart" is intentionally avoided here, as it would be a misnomer in many cases.

THAT'S GOD-AWFUL. Who wrote that footnote? Who decided it would be a good idea to imply the things it implies? And then append it to one of the most important pages in the Wiki? Because I certainly don't want myself to be associated with the sentiment implied by saying that Woobie characters or gay characters are unmasculine.

Because of that among other things, I'm in support of a complete rewrite of the Mary-Sue page--COMPLETE rewrite--as well as removing the Badfic Authors category for reasons stated above. Working on building opinions on the other points presented.

Edit: The FAQ page linked on the main page is unspeakably condescending in tone and is mostly rebuttaling strawmen, which is never ever a good thing. It also doesn't actually answer any questions. I have a problem with this.

--DirtyCommie 18:37, November 9, 2011 (UTC)

Edit:

''THAT'S GOD-AWFUL. Who wrote that footnote? Who decided it would be a good idea to imply the things it implies? And then append it to one of the most important pages in the Wiki? Because I certainly don't want myself to be associated with the sentiment implied by saying that Woobie characters or gay characters are unmasculine.''

I wrote that line. However, I did not link it to any of the articles that it is now linked to. Rather, I linked it to an OOC Suefic where Will Turner turned into, in the words of PotCSues, "a blushing little girl." This is a problem common in bad slash--and I do not find it homophobic to have pointed it out. My original example was not just about making a character OOC, but making a character OOC in a very specific pattern, i.e. making a male canon character much more conventionally female...not to explore how that would change a story, but because the Suethor didn't know how to write a romance without one stereotypical male character and one stereotypical female character, and yet s/he still insisted on writing slash. I do not see a problem with what I originally said.

As for the FAQ page being condescending...yes, I'll concede that it is. But I don't see how it's any more condescending than picking a bad fanfic story, then writing in characters that "fix" everything that you think is wrong with that story, up to and including killing off the Mary Sues. The PPC is not based on the motto that all fanfic is created equal, that all fanfic has inherent worth just because someone happened to type it up, and that any character interpretation is a valid one. We don't PPC because we think we're on the same writing level as the badfic authors. A little condescension is unavoidable, I think. If there is too much, please point out specific parts that you had a problem with.

As for rebutting strawmen, I am sorry to say that I have heard every single argument on that list from one badfic writer or another. In fact, the whole reason the FAQ was created was because the PPC was hearing these same complaints all the time, so we wanted a place we could reference instead of having to type up the same rebuttals over and over and over. It does answer several questions, but it could also be titled "Frequently Addressed Complaints". As for rewriting it, I would be happy to look at it again. However, please note that, as it says in the FAQ, I am the compiler only. If there are direct quotes that I recognize from other PPCers, I would have to either remove the section completely or rewrite it completely. Araeph 00:22, November 12, 2011 (UTC)

{C I pretty much agree with Aster. I think that she summed it up really well. So: I support abolishing the Badfic Authors category, but leaving the Slain Mary Sues category as it is. I am not sure about the Mary-Sue page.

--desdendelle 21:05, November 9th, (GMT +2)


 * Partially agree, partially disagree. I'm with Aster on the content stuff. If people want to write articles for things that have redlinks, or no links, they are more than welcome to do that; making the wiki look neater in the meantime by removing those dead end links shouldn't stop anyone (and that includes you, July&mdash;if you feel strongly about this, write some missing pages or beef up some stubs!). However, if I come across a redlink or a one-line article with one or two links to it that hasn't been touched for years, and it's about something that isn't even a PPC concept, that doesn't scream "we need a full article here!" to me; rather, it says "we don't really need this that much after all; let's use it to expand another article that people are more likely to see." Anyway, as Aster says, this is PPC Wiki, not Miscellaneous Fandom Whatnot Wiki. Narrowing the content does improve the quality of the wiki, in the same way that editing a story for length improves its quality: by putting the emphasis on what's most relevant rather than spreading the reader's attention over a zillion inconsequential details.


 * I definitely agree that the tone of various pages can be improved, though (and as I've said before, talk to Araeph about the FAQ for Other People; she wrote it, it's hers to fix or pass to others). I volunteered to rewrite the Mary Sue page the last time we discussed what Mary Sue actually means, and I still intend to do that. However, July, I take issue with you misquoting the Fanon (not Fandom; had to search around to find what you were talking about) page. It doesn't say X things are dumb, it says "Bad Fanon can also refer to a common misconception, such as that Azula is lesbian, Marth, Roy, and Ike are from the same world, Thranduil is abusive or Elves are immune to the cold." There's nothing wrong with that; those are misconceptions, misconceptions are bad. If you're going to quote examples, please make sure the material in quotes is actually what the page says.


 * I do agree that we don't need pages about authors (and see also the discussion I started on the Killed Badfic talk page). However, I'm on the fence about Sue and Stu pages. On the side of keeping them, I don't see how it's any worse than writing stories about killing them, or in the cases of recruits, outright appropriating a character that was originally created by someone else, however much we may modify them afterward. If we're concerned about Sue pages for infringement reasons, then recruiting Sues or other badfic characters is a far worse offense, and we'd have to put a stop to that as well. Personally, I don't have that concern.


 * On the other hand, perhaps we don't need pages for just any Sues; perhaps only for particularly exemplary ones. The Original Series ones fit into that category, in that case; Celebrian does, as does laura; and perhaps archetypal and unique ones. The purpose of keeping these would be to serve as real examples of the sort of thing we do find to be bad&mdash;not just any OCs, but these ones, with descriptions and charges provided to explain what makes them bad. (Whatever we do, though, we really ought to rename the category "Slain Sues and Stus.")


 * All that said, I would like to advise against panicking over what other people think about us. I don't think we're quite panicking yet, but it could very easily go that way. I think we should strive to express ourselves clearly so as to avoid antagonizing people by accident, but what we're expressing is always going to piss some people off (such as the ones who are convinced that using the term Mary Sue for any reason is Teh Ebulz). Personally, I can live with that. I don't write PPC stories for those people, and I don't need their approval; I write PPC stories for other PPCers. If we can't call a misconception a misconception, we're pretty much done here. So, let's not freak out too much over the opinions of people who aren't going to like us no matter what we do. Improve the tone for clarity, yes; try not to alienate people who have never heard of us before, yes; avoid being outright dicks, definitely. Try to avoid offending everyone ever? No&mdash;it's impossible. Parody and satire are inflammatory. We have to live with that or quit.


 * ~Neshomeh 19:09, November 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * To begin with, yes, I directly stated that it's supposed to be the PPC wiki and that things should be written from a PPC treatment on how we- as PPCers- see it, on various articles. It doesn't mean it should be only limited to things people have done a mission on. There are plenty of things that we can't actually do missions on that we still have views or philosophies that are related to; last I recall, we didn't actually have any missions set in Twilight for a long time, but we still had a full article on the series. The same with Inheritance. We also have an article on the Eye of Argon. As fandoms and/or works, they are relevant to us. Saying it should be limited to things we've tackled or are going to tackle is, quite frankly, close minded.


 * In regards to the items on the fanon page: incorrect, it does say that. Look at the links for that section. (And apologies, typed that at four in the morning while on a caffeine overdose.) To basically strip and change it to parenthesis: "Bad Fanon can also refer to a common misconception, such as that (Azula| ATLA) (is lesbian| stupid), (Marth, Roy, and Ike|Fire Emblem) (are from the same world|Dumb), (Thranduil| LotR) (is abusive|Do Not Want) or (Elves) (are immune to the cold|stupid)." So yes, I did say what the quoted portion actually did say, and did not misconstrue it. There is no way that most of that is acceptable. The most hideous aspect of that whole sentence is saying 'well, thinking that X character is a lesbian is stupid, how could you say that?' That's not just heteronormative, that's condescending.


 * There is plenty of that around, and not just on the fanon and Mary Sue pages, as I mentioned. This is a serious issue, and one we do need to fix.


 * Further arguments in regards to the Slain Sues pages is that we don't need content that is that comprehensive, because as you noted, they're mostly the same old thing. We don't need to have every single Sue ever dealt with with their own little cute Gaia avatar, brief biography, charge list, and miscellaneous details.


 * It's not infringement that is the issue here, but going into such detail over characters that we didn't create, when the only point is to tack on to the end 'and then we killed them'. Maybe a page of killed Sues, but not article after article after article that thoroughly over-examines and nitpicks. That is going too far for something we consider a hobby.


 * This is not panicking. This is prompting a reconsideration of the issue that there's a clear and consistent pattern of condescending tone. We are not better than anyone else, and yes, we will, regardless of whatever we do, will be pissing people off.


 * That doesn't mean we should be going out of our way to do it, or be using statements that can be taken as such. We maintain, in theory, the idea that 'we're not judging them- the writers- as being bad people' but then we have articles and articles saying this idea is stupid, and that idea is dumb, and maintaining a thorough position of supremacy. The FAQ for others, as Joe noticed, is made massively of straw- and while yes, I will be trying to talk to Araeph about seeing about cleaning it up to be actually useful- it helps set a massive and bad tone for everything.


 * We go out of our way to tell people we don't think we're better than others- both people who want to join the PPC and people outside of it- so we should be actually showing we think that on this wiki, since it's such a huge landing spot.
 * We can't not be offensive to every single person, but we can at least come down off the high horse the wiki positions us as being on. -posted by July at 19:54, November 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * @ July on the Azula thing. I'm sorry. I made that edit, and I should have been more thoughtful and considered all possible sensibilities of people reading the article. I did not mean to come across as a nasty stereotyper person. It just so happens that a Bad Fanon exists for Azula that consists of 'She's awkward around men in a romantic context, she's hateful and angry... she must be a sterotypical angry lesbian that is hot for her best girl friends!' It's a bad fanon, a common assumption that is uncanon and nasty. But I will change my wording because I now clearly see the phrasing in context to the link to be problematic. Thank you for bringing it up, July. It is always nice to have others to catch my mistakes. Aster Corbett 20:23, November 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * Aster, you're laying it on a bit thick. Especially since you didn't quite fix the problem; Phobos is on that as I type, removing the problematic links and making some other fixes, too. It wasn't about the wording of the obvious text, as I already pointed out, but rather putting a link to "Stupid" under the word lesbian. We don't think lesbians are stupid, so that made no sense. The other links in that vein similarly added nothing to the article. That was the problem.


 * No need to thank me for pointing it out. Just don't make the same mistake again, and that will be better.


 * ~Neshomeh 03:01, November 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * I just want to address the Slain Mary Sues discussion. I don't agree with eliminating the category, for three reasons. One, as has already been mentioned, having an article about a Sue that has received the mission treatment is certainly not a worse treatment of the character than the mission itself was. Two, as FractalDawn brought up below, we would be losing many historical Sues from the PPC's history, and there are far more interesting Sues in our past than just those from the Original Series. Three, and perhaps most importantly, the Slain Sue pages are fun. They are fun to read, and fun to make. It's also fun to show off our alternate character interpretations of these Sue characters, in an in-PPC-universe style. For better or for worse, the assassination targets are part of the PPC canon, regardless of original author, and should be represented on our Wiki.


 * In response to something Aster said (I think it was Aster; this page is getting hard to read) about lacking Sue-wraith articles and other non-assassination mission types, perhaps we should finda way to represent them as well. I don't know if every mission should be represented by a page, but perhaps a bit more coverage over the objects of our attention would help de-emphasize our apparent focus on Sues. (Agreeing with Neshomeh, though: we shouldn't go crazy about how we're perceived by the outside internet. We do fight Sues; it's part of who we are—only a part, but it's there. And we shouldn't try to hide that, from ourselves or from anyone else.)


 * (Also, welcome back FractalDawn!) —Doctorlit 03:15, November 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * @ Nesh. Sorry. I'm just a bit afraid and paranoid lately of some community aspects and having a past edit of mine brought up like this as 100 percent completely unacceptable-bigoted-stupid-bad is not really good for peace of mind sometimes. I didn't mean to lay it on thick. I'm just ashamed and embarassed and want to turn in my credibility license and curl up in a dark corner of bad-wiki-editing-ness.
 * @ doctorlit, I didn't say that but I agree with it. A friend of mine pointed out that she loves the slain Sue pages because they're more fun to read and navigate looking for missions to read than the incredibly long slain badfic list. Aster Corbett 05:04, November 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * Aster, see my response on your Talk page. It doesn't really bear on the rest of the discussion, so I didn't feel leaving it here was appropriate. ~Neshomeh 16:44, November 10, 2011 (UTC)

Some thoughts
Hey, guys, inactive old PPCer who kind of dropped off because of a mission never got finished, and it's really hard to keep that going. I've been seriously considering coming back lately, so I wanted to respond to a few issues raised here, specifically the ones that hit my buttons, especially because I have been wanting to come back, and some of these issues will affect how happy I'll likely be if I do.

1) I believe the intention of condensing existing content is analogous to Strunk and White's Rule 17: "Omit unnecessary words." Cutting superfluous material or adding it in to related pages makes it easier to navigate and find information, especially as to how it relates to other topics. Frankly, I like this idea, because the fewer pages I have to look up things to catch up on since I dropped off the face of the earth. On the other hand? I do get the impulse to microfile anything. I simply feel that longer existing pages rather than, say, lots of stubs is cleaner.

Also, working on existing pages is the way to improve content and quality. If you ignore it and just start adding new stuff, there's tons of old stuff that is 'lower quality' and would need to be addressed anyway. So might as well start off with spring cleaning; adding the pages that are the 'red links' doesn't help much if you have to split your attention.

2) I think that some of the points raised about 'not judging the writer for what is written' are interesting; I haven't been around for that, but there are some conflicts of interest here. First of all, the whole point of the PPC is to critique bad writing and bad fan-knowledge; that right there is judging them as a writer. It's inescapable. On the other hand, it isn't right to judge the writer as a person's ethics--not unless there is something so blatantly horrific, like outright racism/homophobia/misogynistic stuff, and I don't mean even by vague PPCer interpretation; I mean things like the author seriously looking to think that women are only good for being pregnant in the kitchen or some such. Admittedly, filtering this through the Agent going "...Are they really saying that? Thinking that? That's terrible" does also imply it's an Agent thought, and technically you could put a disclaimer like they do in movies about not related to etc.

It is also, I think, perfectly fine to judge for something so outright Out of Character and truly horrific and libelous of said character and to say so outright. Say, for instance, you've got a fic that makes a character who would never, ever, ever commit an atrocious act and is shown doing so to another canon character out of a jealousy that would never be acted upon in that way? Oh yes, it is reasonable and part of the PPC's heritage to do that and go WHAT IN GOD'S NAME ARE YOU DOING CRAZYPERSON.

Making sweeping statements about fanon and establishers thereof is probably not such a good idea because personal opinions shouldn't be imposed to a certain degree; however, contending things which contradict something absolutely and firmly established by canon be labelled as AU.

Look, let's face it: read TOS. Like I said earlier, the point of the PPC was to criticize quality of writing or blatant abuse of canon in writing. That's judgment. That's one of the things that made it so appealing in the first place: when honest, polite concrit was treated as flame and got a person slammed by fandom, it made and still makes a great outlet to take out the frustration about it.

3) The 'emasculating' thing is this: the word can be applied to women as much as men. While the term has an unfortunate history in referring to castration and the social stigma, there are other modern uses. Sometimes it's still used in an unfortunate sense, but frequently not by modern people, and not most PPCers I remember from Back In The Day When. My favorite example of this for years has been the word 'moot.' If you went by 'using the first definition of a word,' everyone who says 'moot point' would be hilariously inaccurate in what they wanted to convey. 'Moot' technically means open to discussion and debate; most of the time it's used as the precise opposite. I don't think it automatically overwrites the history, but as it makes itself understood in communication, it is somehow a word which means its antonym as well. (Wrap your head around that, it's so bizarre.)

'Emasculating,' in modern usage, has a second definition and frequently used of 'depriving of strength or vigor; weakening.' In this sense, you can apply it to women as well as men, and is entirely appropriate to a PPC mission. In fact, it is a form of homophobia on the part of the Badfic Author if their characterization goes so far Out of Character that the character becomes a woobie when they were a strong personality simply because they are changed into being gay. If the observation is made by the PPCer that this is what the author has done, it's not the PPCer's judgment that being gay does so; it's the observation that the Author has made it so. That's the author's subtextual homophobia, conscious or not. The PPCer shouldn't comment on that as saying it's homophobic unless the Author makes it very, very clear that they believe this about all gays, at which point it is seriously just that even if the Author doesn't want to call it that. But it is the perogative and in fact duty in the spirit of the entire PPC for a PPCer to go "Uh, you've gone so far out of character it's not funny, and you did it by assuming that because the character is gay, this strong and driven warrior is a wibbling, angsting, spineless little twit now." Being made sympathetic is one thing; having all the characterization thrown out the window as a result of that change? Is very different, and in fact insulting to the LGBTQ community.

4) The part about removing old Badfic Authors has a serious point, honestly, but not because of the reason you say. It has nothing to do with 'not judging the person etc.,' but because people do change and, honestly, some of them may have been idiotic teens and since grown out of it. I do agree that it shouldn't be held over their heads, but we judged them to be someone with idiotic ideas and crappy writing. Just because we should move on from pettiness doesn't mean it's retracting judgment.

However, I oppose the removal of old Slain Mary Sues. Active PPCers are not the the only part of the PPC, and having those there and links to the missions helps celebrate our past and those who contributed to a great community going. It is, in my opinion, outright rude of the current central community to deny our past; even our mistakes are part of our past. If we refuse to acknowledge it, it's rewriting history. I don't believe that's admirable or fair to past PPCers and their legacy. Removing the name of the Author associated with them from a list, absolutely; I think we should, however, keep the list because, well, people contributed those things. Let's acknowledge that they contributed to the growth of this community.

Anyway, those are the thoughts of someone who wants to come back and seriously make a go at being part of this place again, because it was an awesome community and a place I'd like to call a home again.

FractalDawn (Lee)


 * Hi, Lee! Welcome back!


 * I'd like to respond to your points 2 and 3 particularly. A lot of stuff has happened since you were last around, so I want to try to explain what's different. To start with, there is a big difference between judging someone's work and judging them as a human being. You're right, we're absolutely here to judge and critique other people's writing, but it's one thing to say "hey, this characterization of Aragorn is crazy," and another to say "Hey, you're crazy." We're trying to get away from the latter and focus more on the former. It's essentially the rule of "Hate the sin, not the sinner." We (and our agents) have every license to say "Ye gods, sexism is terrible!" but not to say "You're a terrible person for holding beliefs we don't agree with!" You see how it's kind of problematic that way?


 * As for emasculation, I don't know about others, but I've never seen or heard "emasculating" applied to a woman in a real situation. I think it's easier to use clearer language than to try to defend the word in this case.


 * Regarding subtextual homophobia, I think it's going a bit far to say characterizing someone with a gay stereotype is homophobic. Insulting, possibly, but not necessarily indicative of a hatred of gay people. Some gay people seem to embrace the stereotype, actually, likely with the reason of wanting other members of the gay community to know they're a part of it and not afraid to show it. They may be a vocal minority, I don't have numbers to back me up&mdash;and it doesn't excuse the rest of the world for being ignorant&mdash;but it does go some way to explain why an inexperienced writer would use the stereotype to characterize a gay character without actually being homophobic.


 * However, that doesn't make it appropriate to characterize someone from Middle-earth that way, for instance. That stereotype doesn't exist there, so there's no reason for Aragorn to start lisping because he wants to get it on with Legolas. That's certainly a charge, not because it's homophobic, but because it simply makes no bloody sense. (I'm not sure why a homophobe would be writing slash, come to think of it.)


 * The point is that it's always possible to critique the writing without insulting a real person. Respect is in the PPC Constitution, and that's what we're aiming for here. We don't have to agree with badfic writers, but we do have to treat them like fellow human beings, however much we may disagree with them and wish they'd think differently.


 * ~Neshomeh 17:25, November 10, 2011 (UTC)