FAQ: For Other People

This is the new FAQ: For Other People. You will note that it no longer consists entirely of an insulting rant aimed at people who don't like us. This is, of course, intentional.

What do you do?
We are dedicated to promoting good writing and also criticizing and making fun of bad writing. We usually do this by writing stories where our characters travel into bad fanfics and sort them out by getting writing of the eye-bleeding character defamation, eye-sporking slash, eye watering Mary Sues, and other things that may cause occular damage.

Why do you do it?
Well, because it's cathartic to rip into a piece of bad writing, because it can be educational (maybe), and because we have a genuine distaste for bad writing and a passion for good stuff, among other reasons.

But mostly because it's really really fun.

Who are you, anyway?
Me, the person writing the answer to this FAQ question? Hi! I'm Thoth, one of several PPC members with really pretentious mythological names. I wrote some of the responses to these FAQ questions, including this one, largely because I felt really passionate about replacing the angry rant that this whole thing kinda used to be.

Oooh, you meant that PPC generally! We're a group of writers and writer-adjacent people with a passion for fanfiction, and good, high-quality writing. We are of varying ages, levels of experience, confidence, physical locations, genders, sexualities, and whatnot. As you may have noticed, we're pretty diverse, and we try to be fairly inclusive. :-)

... say what's good or bad writing?
As it turns out, you don't actually need some kind of special right to decide whether you think something is good or bad. It's something anyone can do.

And we are by no means some ultimate arbiters of truth and of good writing. What, do you think we'd be hanging around here if we were? We're just a bunch of writers. Nothing special, no magical powers. If you disagree with us and you can explain why, we might decide that we were wrong and that a piece of writing we thought was bad is actually great!

I mean, the odds of that are about a billion to one. But it could happen, theoretically.

... use my writing in your missions?
Title 17, Section 107 of the US Legal Code or your regional equivalent, probably. I'd say we qualify as both criticism and possibly a transformative work, but hey, I'm not a lawyer.

... bully other writers?
Absolutely nothing. Which is one of the reasons why explicitly try not to do that. Other than, you know, the fact that it's an awful thing to do, and just... really really nasty.

If you're talking about missions, missions are not bullying. In fact, read any mission in recent history, it's rare for the author to even really be mentioned in the mission itself. We focus on criticizing, judging, and making fun of stories. Not writers.

If you still feel like criticizing your work is inherently attacking you... I can't really help you with that. But believe me when I say it: attacking you isn't our intent.

... judge my story?
Being a human being! As it turns out, anyone can judge a story. You can, too. Heck, you can judge our stories, and decide that they're terrible and that we're really bad writers. And if you do that, and you can explain why you think our stories are bad, we might actually agree with you. And then we'll do our best to write better stories. Because we all want to be better writers.

Do you just call all female OCs Suvians?
Absolutely not. As you will see on the Mary Sue page, we maintain our own definition of what a Sue is, and Sues must have a certain set of qualities to be called such. Note that none of those are even really female-specific, which brings us right to...

Do you make fun of male characters/characters by male writers too?
Absolutely! We here at the PPC will spork regardless of gender (although many of our targets are female, simply due to the demographics of fanfiction writers as a whole). Hence, meet Gary Stu, the male version of Mary Sue! Mmm... I can taste the horror already.

And just to clarify, yes, Mary Sue is both female and gender neutral, depending on context. Confusing, da?

Isn't the term 'Mary Sue' too broad to use any more?
In some circles, perhaps! Some people tend to call anything they don't like a Sue. However, as previously mentioned, the PPC keeps its own, specific definition of the term for this exact reason. If people are calling something a Sue, and it doesn't fit our definition, then for our purposes, it isn't a Sue.

Are you trying to insult, upset, or attack writers?
Not at all! We firmly believe there is a difference between a writer and their work. We wish those that we have sporked the very best. Heck, writers who we respect may have written work that is spork-worthy in the past, including many PPCers (I know I have...). Hence why a writer will occasionally request that their work be sporked.

We will not spork a work out a personal desire to attack a writer, regardless of whether we like them or how we feel. Indeed, there are rules against bashing writers in our community.

Why not just give constructive criticism instead?
Well, in a lot of cases, concrit doesn't get very far. If you, dear reader, found out your story was sporked, and actually looked, and then bothered to come to this wiki looking for answers, you're putting in a lot more effort than many writers would (thank you for that, by the way!). It's all too common for concrit to be ignored, and received extremely poorly. In addition, a number of the stories that we mission are so incredibly bad that it's hard give them concrit at all.

Which isn't to say that we don't provide it at all! There are many members who will gladly leave concrit and reviews on fanfic. But we also do this. Why? Honestly, because it's fun.

Why not just read and write good stories instead of attacking bad ones?
Because we have fun doing this! Besides, is there any reason we can't do both?

...The answer, by the way, is "no". That was a rhetorical question. The PPC has a long history, and we have a wealth of characters with their own stories and arcs, told through the rich medium of making fun of badly written fanfic, with the occasional interlude here and there.

Didn't this used to be a long, angry rant?
You're thinking of Araeph's original FAQ: For Other People. It was written in 2007; after ten years, we felt it was time for a change.