Ah yes...

How do people feel about another blackout? by Makkara on 2017-12-11 15:37:00 UTC Reply

I seem to recall that there was a problem when JRR stopped spinning for a bit, (since he's such a powerful source that other authors are actually taken offline when he overspins) but I can't seem to find the stories at the moment.

One of my favorite stories is "Plotholes and Meatloaf and Angels, Oh My!"

Basically, the one story I really want to write involves some sort of power outage and the intrusion of a canon world into HQ. I'm even thinking about trying it for my permission piece since the prompt I've been trying won't cooperate.

What I've been kinda mentally messing with is one of the plothole stabilizers went down, which resulted in about 1-10% of Headquarters reverting to the canon worlds they cut through.

The amount of HQ affected can be larger if there's a lot of interest, but I want a large enough portion of HQ unaffected so that the people who don't want to participate in the emergency are so far from the problem that they can go years without hearing anything about it.

I think your intro thread is still on the first page. by Neshomeh on 2017-12-11 18:14:00 UTC Reply

You're a day shy of being here two weeks. It's a bit premature to be plotting an Emergency-esque event. Also, if that's honestly the ONE story you want to write, you are missing out on a lot of what the PPC has to offer. Yes, the Blackout was fun at the time, but there will be plenty of other fun events. I guess you just missed the Halloween RP, but hang around, and something else fun will happen that won't require rehashing a thing that was cool partly because it happened spontaneously.

~Neshomeh

Yeah, just a bit excited. by Makkara on 2017-12-11 19:04:00 UTC Reply

I'm exaggerating a bit when I say it's the only story I want to write, but it's my strongest idea at the moment.

That story with my gnomish agent meeting Barid when she first came to HQ, I'm not really happy with the way I told it. I was thinking about asking Phobos if Barid and Tocly could be frienemies, but that one feels really premature in contrast to wanting to write a blackout story. (Especially when I'm wondering if Tocly will ever work.)

I did hear about a Purim party when I was lurking. I do have an idea where there is a question about the tastefulness of wearing Mageweave Robes when they include a stole.

I also have other ideas... but how do you add interest to a story where it's about a character complaining that the whites of her eggs are so overcooked that she can't cut them, but yet the yolks are still runny. (I cooked eggs that did that the other day, so it's somehow possible.)

By using your imagination. by Huinesoron on 2017-12-11 19:42:00 UTC Reply

"Oh, come on! That's not possible."

Selene sighed and looked up from her book. "That's the third time you've said that tonight," she pointed out. "What have they done now?"

"They're burnt on the outside but still raw in the middle!" Kaitlyn folded her arms and glared at the campfire. "It's ridiculous."

Selene raised one thin eyebrow. "Sorry, are we still talking about Merry and Pippin here?"

"Merry and--?" Kaitlyn scoffed. "Selene, sweetheart, if the fuzzies had set themselves on fire, I'd be a little more concerned than this."

"You weren't when they scorched themselves with that firework..."

"That's different," Kaitlyn said with a sniff. "That was comedy."

"For a given value of the word." Selene shook her head. "So who has gotten themselves burnt? With this fic, I really have no idea who you're thinking of."

"You have some really weird ideas about fanfic." Kaitlyn waved a frying pan in the air, sloshing hot oil everywhere. "My dinner, Selene. I was talking about my dinner." She tilted her head to the side, thoughtful. "I suppose it's not really a problem you'd face..."

"It's not usually considered polite to cook people before drinking their blood, no." Selene gestured upwards with her bookmark. "But I thought you were watching the Words?"

"No, you were doing that," Kaitlyn said. "Weren't you?"

The vampire fixed her with a level gaze. "Kaitlyn. I have a book in my hands. What do you think I'm doing?"

"... fair." Kaitlyn sighed and prodded the disaster of her dinner with a fork. "Do you think you can exorcise slash-wraiths with badly-cooked sausages...?"

~

I went for sausages over eggs because they make more sense to cook over an open fire, but exactly the same principle applies. You use the concept as a basis, and let your characters interact around it.

Also: this is exactly why we have the Permission Prompts in the first place. They are designed to be quirky situations which your characters get into and have an opportunity to show us who they are. If you're scrabbling desperately to find an idea for your Permission piece, just use the ones we worked so hard on! Seriously.

The 'normal', expected path for a PPC writer's first few stories is:

-Permission prompt showing their agents meeting/joining/whatever.
-Permission prompt showing a weird situation.
-First mission.
-Second mission.
-Probably first Interlude.
-Third mission.
-Branching out into different stuff.

Lily Winterwood had a lot of missions and interludes under her belt when she wrote the Blackout story. She knew how the PPC setting worked, inside and out, and had shown us that she did. That's why I was happy to let her borrow my character (Morgan), and why I was so excited to read it. None of us started out by writing epics, here; take it slow, and find your feet before trying to soar.

hS

Ah yes... by Makkara on 2017-12-11 20:09:00 UTC Reply

With the eggs thing, I was specifically thinking about the cafeteria. The story I tried to write around that ended up with someone insulting Maddie because she was fat, (whether or not he intended for her to hear it is something I haven't worked out,) her trying to ignore it... Tocly stepping in and I can't even describe what she said, (it was something really racist encountered by Martha Jones in the Family of Blood arc) and Maddie dragging Tocly out of the cafeteria before they even got to the food. Tocly didn't understand at that point that there's different levels to criticizing how someone looks.

Oh, does this make it less racist? by Makkara on 2017-12-11 21:57:00 UTC Reply

Instead of encountering a human and why he chose to look that way...

What if it was a Krubera (a type of troll) and questioning why he ignored the sign on the cafeteria that says "don't feed the trolls" ?
Wait, wait, no. by Huinesoron on 2017-12-11 20:29:00 UTC Reply

Did you just say "I wrote my prospective agent using a racist insult"? Please tell me you didn't just say that.

hS

Well, I didn't write it down... by Makkara on 2017-12-11 20:53:00 UTC Reply

This is just how it ended up before I sat down to write.

On Tocly's end, I don't think she realized how bad it was. (I couldn't make a wow character look like my coolest HS friend.)

The views of my characters aren't my views.

It's like that recent Dove ad, maybe.

I'm also not up-to-date on whether or not fat people are an acceptable target. I know that non-europeans aren't, and I'm not even sure what the PC term is anymore.

I'm not even sure how acceptable it is to show people making non-PC remarks and then get disproportionately punished for it. (Or what appropriate punishment looks like.)

Short answer, I did not actually write her using a racist insult.

I don't want to do this dance again, so I'll be blunt. by Neshomeh on 2017-12-12 14:11:00 UTC Reply

Makkara, I regret to inform you that you are reminding me and hS alarmingly of a person who was banned not once, but twice from the PPC, because they evaded the first ban by sneaking back in under a new name. That being the precedent, I have to ask: Are you zdimensia/Bramandin/TooPurple under yet another new name?

~Neshomeh

Re: I don't want to do this dance again, so I'll be blunt. by Makkara on 2017-12-12 15:00:00 UTC Reply

I did what you invited me to do. Getting back to the point where you were actually treating me like a human being is why I did this.

I'll ask you bluntly: did you intend for me to suffer to the point of me wanting to kill myself?

As an aside, I am very insulted that you keep calling my point of view delusional. Not because of the way you say it, but you're just dismissing everything I have to say.

I don't do what you ask me to because you won't even listen to me.

This is my deal... I drop getting permission for a year, even with a plan to rewrite my stories so they're not PPC.

You get to know me and stop discriminating against me because of my disability. A lot of the problems have come from YOU breaking the constitution.

Paging the Nameless Admin. (nm) by Tomash on 2017-12-12 15:08:00 UTC Reply

'Makkara' is a confirmed alias of Zdimensia. by The Nameless Admin. on 2017-12-12 15:16:00 UTC Reply

'Makkara' has posted from only one IP address, 24.93.151.108.

That IP address has now been blocked.

Any attempt by 'Makkara' to circumvent this ban will result in their posts being summarily deleted and any other IP addresses blocked.

Everyone please stop replying to 'Makkara'; she is no longer a member of this community. (It is also considered unfair to say things to people who cannot reply.)

If you are currently in email communication with 'Makkara', it is of course your own choice whether to continue talking to her; however, please do not relay any messages from her to the PPC Board, IRC, Wiki, or any other PPC community space.

-The Nameless Admin

That escalated quickly. (nm) by twistedwindowpane on 2017-12-16 20:25:00 UTC Reply

Not really. by Huinesoron on 2017-12-17 10:40:00 UTC Reply

She's been banned at least twice. Once it was confirmed that 'Makkara' was Zdimensia, her ban was re-enforced. No escalation, just standard following of the rules.

hS
Based on previous experience by Hieronymus Graubart on 2017-12-17 08:46:00 UTC Reply

Nobody wants to watch this escalating over weeks or months again.

HG

IP blocked on the wiki, too. (nm) by Neshomeh on 2017-12-12 15:30:00 UTC Reply
And speaking for myself... by Huinesoron on 2017-12-12 15:17:00 UTC Reply

... if Pasty Greens (or anyone else) chooses to use this banned user as a beta-reader for a Permission request or other PPC story, I would look extremely askance at it.

hS

WELP. by Pasty Greens on 2017-12-14 05:56:00 UTC Reply

What exactly is her story?

Long and dark. by Huinesoron on 2017-12-14 09:07:00 UTC Reply

Basically racism, harassment, repeated ban violations, and refusal to accept any responsibility for her actions or recognise that she might have done anything wrong.

hS