I just thought of something else: The #badfic channel of the Discord. I don't know about how people with Permission who use the Discord see it, but I could definitely see how it could be detrimental to writing missions in the long run. I know that if I had Permission, I would try to actively avoid missioning things I had previously thrown into the Discord; after all, a good chunk of people would have already seen what makes the fic bad, so it would be a bunch of extra work writing things just to get some character interactions down onto a page (not that there's anything wrong with that, it just puts the "sporking badfic" aspect of PPC writing far in the background).

I don't really have any suggestions for dealing with this potential problem, if it even is a problem. I just thought it was worth mentioning.

Even if I can't personally keep up with realtime chat in a large group, I agree that it's of great benefit to have a space where you're free to try out ideas without needing to commit to them for life.

If you like it, of course, it can always become canon. {= )

~Neshomeh

And it's not all what I'd choose to present to the wider public. We've changed rather a lot since 2002, and worked hard for that change, and I wouldn't want to put stuff out there that doesn't reflect the culture we have today.

See, IMO, part of our recruitment problem is that it's hard to find people with the right balance of snark and respect in their hearts. Back in the day, the balance was skewed more toward snark. Since then, in response to accusations of bullying and misogyny and such, we've made strides in being critical without being mean. It's a tough balance to strike for anyone, perhaps particularly for the younger, more active set. We ask for a lot of critical thinking as well as a sense of humor.

And there ARE people out there who can walk that line, and enjoy it. If we want to attract them, though, the stuff we choose to put out there has to reflect our current values as much as possible. It shouldn't be just anything, and it certainly can't be everything.

But, here's another issue: Is it okay to repost someone else's work like that? To my mind, preserving stuff in a privately maintained archive for our internal use is one thing, but putting it out on AO3 or whatever would be another.

(Anyway I'm way ahead of you all; I've been on AO3 since the last time we had this conversation, whenever that was.)

~Neshomeh

The Other Problem, the sort of meta-problem if you will, with that issue of not making our existence known is that the PPC fundamentally doesn't mesh well with the internet at large. The forces that created us are mostly dead or diverged from the mainstream and we're left with an internal culture that is likely gonna be very left-field to a lot of newbies.

Culturally, we're closest to Usenet and Forum discourse, as we have the same sort of threading, which promotes topic-focused discussion, rather than the short-form memes and focus on personality that social media interfaces encourage. And we have a lot of expectations that date back to those historical influences, as well as a bias towards long-form posting, that is likely at odds with what any newbie will be used to.

This isn't really a fixable problem. The only way to "fix" it is to change who we are for the worse.

But... well, who's left? Livejournal is dead. The blogosphere isn't what it used to be, Tumblr's terrible threading system ensured that serious conversation would never be that platform's strong suit (even trying to comment on someone's post is a nightmare, just imagine what a discussion would be like...), usenet was on its way out when we were new, and forums just aren't the majority communication form they used to be (they're still around, just not as popular, and they were always fragmented by their very nature anyways).

Social Media won. Reddit is the closest thing now that's still massively popular and the timbre of the place is fundamentally different -- I think all of us know we could never survive as a subreddit. Only the young and naive would even suggest it.

So yeah, we do need a replacement PPC space. Problem is, there's absolutely nowhere suitable to host it.

...that was depressing to write. I'm gonna go write about... I dunno... dragon romance or something to cheer myself up...

...#they always try to teach the wrong lesson (doot do doo)#

No, wait. But also, yes.

Because if you've been writing for a long time, you look at your older stuff and go: yaaarrrghuuerch that's awful! I haven't wanted to look at the beginning of The Reorganisation for over a decade, for instance, and Dafydd's missions... yeah, no.

So while I totally agree with the principle, I also think that for some of us, it's a bigger job than it looks like.

(Though I would love to clean up Dafydd's stuff and post the whole thing in order, splicing in some extra missions to flesh out his relationship with Connie... maybe someyear. But not yet.)

hS

For my part, I'm sorry I never end up commenting on your stuff. It's hard to keep up with everything and whenever someone posts a mission my life invariably goes to heck around the same time and then I never read it and... yeah. Not great for everyone else, I know.

Myself, I just have trouble actually writing longform. Always have. Somewhere around 15 pages in I start to get drained... and then I doubt myself... and then I sloowly start to hate everything I've ever written... and then I have to resist the urge to throw it all away. Again.

So yeah, that's why I still haven't published a second mission.