Subject: So... 'overkill', basically?
Author:
Posted on: 2017-10-22 23:13:00 UTC
It looks like you're talking about jumping in with something approximating a PPC AU. That's interesting enough that I'll look over your 61 pages in the morning; I glanced through it, and there's some points I want to raise when I've had a closer look.
Don't know if I'll put the Permission hat on for that; it depends on what I read, to be honest.
hS
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Hello everyone,
I'd like to make my permission request with the PPC.
My Permission Request is linked here:
https://tripledes.ocloud.de/index.php/s/1euBDMyNyca9Hev
Information on my intentions and purpose behind the spinoff series is on page 9 of the PDF.
Information on my characters is on page 12 of the PDF.
Information on how they will be incorporated into the PPC Continuity is on Page 31 of the PDF.
A sample of my writing starts on Page 35 of the PDF, under the section "Sue-Pernatural."
My contact information is included on page 58 of the PDF.
The detached PGP signature for the PDF is linked here, or you can copy and paste the text below to verify the signature. You will need GnuPG4Windows 3.0, or GnuPGTools for Macintosh or GnuPG for Linux 2.1 to verify the signatures. (Or you'll just have to trust that I wrote it and not someone else posing as me.)
https://tripledes.ocloud.de/index.php/s/YD8IKl9mD6WgwpB
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My public key may be found on the PGP key server:
pgp.key-server.io/0x1AFDB5CF1ED9B926
And should match the following fingerprint:
F509 6084 6B00 56D7 3D17 96AC 1AFD B5CF 1ED9 B926
Any follow up, or commentary that may help improve is appreciated.
~3DES.
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The whole idea of the PPC seems to be killing existing Sues, so the idea of writing your own badfic specifically for your characters to spork seems to take away from the spirit of this group, no matter how "mean" it seems. (You did read the part of the wiki that said it is inadvisable to show an original author their killed, fic, yes?) The impression I get is that part of the fun of finding a real badfic is that moment of "Oh my god, someone actually wrote this and thought it was a good idea." It just seems like making up your own badfics for the sake of being killed in the story takes away from that because it's not like we can laugh along with the agents.
These are just my thoughts, I don't know if there's a seniority thing here and if I'm totally out of line.
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Hi Pasty Greens,
You are right and I actually agree that it's much more natural and much more organic to find a real badfic. In some cases, much more satisfying as well.
I mentioned somewhere in this thread a bit more about why, but I'll sum it here: around 2010, the PPC came under fire publicly when a writer accused them of cyberbullying other people over their Mary Sues. It was quite a lot of bad press. I am cautious by nature, so rather than try to manage the risk of accidentally stomping all over someone's ego, even by accident, I've decided to eliminate the risk entirely.
This is just something I will do on my own, since I believe that other people here may be more capable of managing that risk than me.
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To answer your question: I personally think so. If you're (say) interpreting a quirky turn of phrase overly-literally, it's much more entertaining to know that it's 'natural' than to know that you wrote it yourself.
But other people disagree. In-universe, all badfics sporked by the PPC exist on the same level. Out-of-universe, there have always been people who preferred to home-brew. It's not forbidden, though my opinion is much the same as yours.
hS
Okay, first, some housekeeping:
-Your need to put PGP signatures on everything feels kind of like a lack of trust in the PPC. Okay, you use Tor - that's not actually banned. But assuming that we'll look at a troll claiming to be you and go 'onoes we must have misjudged TripleDES all this time BANBANBAN' is... strange? Because we're not actually sitting here looking for any excuse to ban you.
-Given that people may be using either a phone or a browser, it's usually better to provide something that can be read on either. Google Docs work perfectly for this, since they adjust to the screen width. Your Permission Request is very difficult to read on the PC. It's also hard to copy and paste quotes from, since things like linebreaks don't show up at all on the copy.
-The reason for the character bios being requested at 200 words is that you shouldn't need to put much in them. The purpose of the bios is to check that you haven't slipped something Suvian into the backstory or powers that doesn't show up in the writing sample. That's it. It's not so we get their entire life story.
Now, onto the request itself. I'm going to go through this in order and comment on what I see:
-'Because I don’t feel right bullying other people over their Mary Sues...' This is an immediate warning bell for me. Do you think the PPC is about bullying people? In your explanation to Iximaz, you use language such as 'taking huge amounts of flak and ridicule from someone anonymous', which suggests you kind of do.
That isn't what we do. The PPC community is very clear about the distinction between authors and their characters. Comment on the characters doing stupid things, but never say a word about the authors. And that's not in a 'nudge nudge, that Sue is so badly written she probably lived in her mother's basement in a previous life, NOT TALKING ABOUT THE WRITER hehe' sense - it's that we recognise that writing is an art form, and one that takes practice. We were all bad writers once, and many of us have PPC'd our own stories for it. That doesn't say anything about us as people, and if anyone thinks that poking fun at badfics is a stand-in for mocking the authors, I advise them to think again - several times.
(Also, I realise you're into the crypto thing, but honestly? It's ridiculously easy to find my name on the internet, but I'd still be 'anonymous to the majority of bad fic authors'. So is every reviewer on Fanfiction.net. Most people don't try and find out who's 'really' talking to them.)
-Your first agent is a canon character (indeed, the main protagonist), albeit in a fiction canon. There go the alarm bells again. Have you read Jasper Fforde's Jurisfiction books? Because it seems like your notion of how the world of fiction works is closer to that than to the PPC's model. You talk about John Smith has since sought work as a fictional character in other venues, but in the PPC multiverse, canon characters don't get to wander off when their series ends. They exist in closed universes - 'realised' to a greater or lesser extent, but always there. They don't move between them, and they don't 'notice' when new installments come out - that's just their timeline, for all it's still being written.
-You also talk about 'a character shield which is powered by two AAA batteries... protects a character from all harm... only for the hero designated by the writers'. Again, this assumes a completely different worldview than that used by the PPC: one in which writers wander into their fiction, and are known by their creations (and can issue technology to an entire genre, somehow). I'll admit it's an amusing idea, and would work pefectly in Jurisfiction, but not in the PPC.
-Your second agent is also a canon character, and has exactly the same issues: she exists in a world where she can wander between fiction at will, and is 'out of work' since her show's cancellation.
-You wrote over 500 words on their car. Here is what you actually needed to write: 'Instead of a normal Response Centre, John and Ayumi use an old car, to make them more like a buddy cop movie'. That's what I mean by overkill. :)
-If your agents are in the Department of Floaters, their department head is the Floating Hyacinth, who isn't prone to yelling. 'the trope of an angry, yelling police chief' may well be common, but it would be a big change to the PPC canon.
-The Department of Floaters isn't just about what canon they work in - it's about what type of missions they tackle. From the All-Purpose Department wiki page:
The All-Purpose Department contains agents who are willing to work in only one fandom but accept all types of missions. Compare to the Department of Floaters, whose agents may work in any fandom and take any type of mission, and the DMS and DBS's Freelance Divisions, whose agents may work in any fandom but only do assassinations or exorcisms, respectively.
So if you're only intending to tackle Mary-Sues, pop them in DMS-Freelance instead.
-Surprisingly, I have no problem with the idea of a portalling car. I'm not sure what the 'real' effect of the travel montage is, though - what do John and Ayumi actually experience? Do they sit in the car and watch it play out on the screen? Do they get teleported from scene to scene?
-'Typical for police dramas, both Ayumi and John carry badges.' Uh... what canon are you writing for, again? Because it doesn't sound like you want to write for the PPC at all.
... I'm skipping ahead.
-I'm looking through the 'writing sample', and... you're not writing the PPC. You don't mention anything from the PPC. Other than 'killing badfic', your story has nothing to do with the PPC.
So... good news! To write a buddy cop show about John and Ayumi, badfic police extraordinaire, their quirky old car, and their shouty Chief who wants Their Badges And Guns You're Off The Case, you don't need Permission! :D You can write it, post it somewhere (I recommend fanfiction.net, though some prefer Archive of Our Own), and let people read it! I'm sure there are people here in the PPC who'd love to beta it for you - folks whose interests include the intersection of anime and action - and we'd be happy for you to plug it on the Board when it's up so we can take a look.
But it's not a PPC story, so it doesn't need PPC Permission. Case... closed.
-----BEGIN CHEEKY HUINESORON SIGNATURE-----
hS
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Hey Huinesoron,
Inline:
> Now, onto the request itself. I'm going to go through this in
> order and comment on what I see:
Thank you for having a look at my piece and approaching it with an open mind. I would really like to know what you felt about the story itself, especially with respect to John and Ayumi's chemistry and the way they interacted, since I haven't written this pair of characters before. Much of this was very off-the-cuff, so I'm eager to hear feedback on it.
> -Your need to put PGP signatures on everything feels kind of l
> ike a lack of trust in the PPC. Okay, you use Tor - that's not
> actually banned. But assuming that we'll look at a troll claim
> ing to be you and go 'onoes we must have misjudged TripleDES a
> ll this time BANBANBAN' is... strange? Because we're not actua
> lly sitting here looking for any excuse to ban you.
The reason I put PGP signatures on everything is not because I distrust the PPC, it is because I do not trust other users on Tor.
What my worry is, may be something like a user such as Bramadin, who had previously attempted to claim my identity and pose as me, or perhaps some Internet troll coming in and misbehaving while trying to pose as me. It would be fairly difficult to ban an abusive user that also uses Tor without banning me in the process as well.
I understand the risks of using Tor to access public sites, and have come to expect that occasionally, Tor may be blacklisted on sites I visit because of abuse or spam. If that does happen, I'll understand and won't take it personally, and will return when all has settled down (although I might try to contact you by E-mail to see if everything is alright first, or I might wait for an "all-clear" from someone in the PPC before I try to come back).
The PGP signatures are a little bit of insurance. They're a technological guarantee that while someone may be able to steal my screen name, they won't be able to steal my online identity with you guys, so long as you guys have the real key that belongs to the real me. [See Footnote 1]
If you guys have my real, genuine key, you'd be able to tell immediately something is amiss if the signature verifies to another key, or if the signature fails to verify and gives a "BAD SIGNATURE from TripleDES!" error. This has the effect of being able to reduce the question of security down to two factors: the security of my computer, and the security of yours.
It's a bit overkill, but, as you guys may have noticed, senseless overkill is a bit of a pattern with me.
> -Given that people may be using either a phone or a browser, i
> t's usually better to provide something that can be read on ei
> ther. Google Docs work perfectly for this, since they adjust t
> o the screen width. Your Permission Request is very difficult
> to read on the PC. It's also hard to copy and paste quotes fro
> m, since things like linebreaks don't show up at all on the co
> py.
Sure. Thoth had a suggestion below, so I'll add another response to theirs, and I'll address this there.
> -The reason for the character bios being requested at 200 word
> s is that you shouldn't need to put much in them. The purpose
> of the bios is to check that you haven't slipped something Suv
> ian into the backstory or powers that doesn't show up in the w
> riting sample. That's it. It's not so we get their entire life
> story.
No problem, I'll try to keep things brief from this point on if asked.
> -'Because I don’t feel right bullying other people over their
> Mary Sues...' This is an immediate warning bell for me. Do you
> think the PPC is about bullying people? In your explanation to
> Iximaz, you use language such as 'taking huge amounts of flak
> and ridicule from someone anonymous', which suggests you kind
> of do.
>
> That isn't what we do. The PPC community is very clear about t
> he distinction between authors and their characters. Comment o
> n the characters doing stupid things, but never say a word abo
> ut the authors. And that's not in a 'nudge nudge, that Sue is
> so badly written she probably lived in her mother's basement i
> n a previous life, NOT TALKING ABOUT THE WRITER hehe' sense -
> it's that we recognise that writing is an art form, and one th
> at takes practice. We were all bad writers once, and many of u
> s have PPC'd our own stories for it. That doesn't say anything
> about us as people, and if anyone thinks that poking fun at ba
> dfics is a stand-in for mocking the authors, I advise them to
> think again - several times.
I understand your concern with the idea of bullying other people over their Mary Sues. I've actually followed the PPC for a little bit longer than I have let on up until now. I remember reading an article that Neshomeh had written sometime ago in response to accusations of cyberbullying. If my memory serves it was a response to a certain "Bosette" that had argued that writing Mary Sues was empowering to women. I recall it being from maybe around mid 2010 originally although I know that it may have been brought up a lot, since it's appeared several times sense.
With this in mind: I want to stress that I intend to homebrew my own badfic simply because I want to be able to err on the side of caution. This way, there can be **no possible way** I could ever be construed as having been engaging in cyberbullying, since there would be no perceptible target, except a fictional author, that doesn't exist.
It's overkill, but again, overkill is just in my nature.
> (Also, I realise you're into the crypto thing, but honestly? I
> t's ridiculously easy to find my name on the internet, but I'd
> still be 'anonymous to the majority of bad fic authors'. So is
> every reviewer on Fanfiction.net. Most people don't try and fi
> nd out who's 'really' talking to them.)
I tend to be a little bit cautious, that's all.
> -Your first agent is a canon character (indeed, the main prota
> gonist), albeit in a fiction canon. There go the alarm bells a
> gain. Have you read Jasper Fforde's Jurisfiction books? Becaus
> e it seems like your notion of how the world of fiction works
> is closer to that than to the PPC's model. You talk about John
> Smith has since sought work as a fictional character in other
> venues, but in the PPC multiverse, canon characters don't get
> to wander off when their series ends. They exist in closed uni
> verses - 'realised' to a greater or lesser extent, but always
> there. They don't move between them, and they don't 'notice' w
> hen new installments come out - that's just their timeline, fo
> r all it's still being written.
>
> -Your second agent is also a canon character, and has exactly
> the same issues: she exists in a world where she can wander be
> tween fiction at will, and is 'out of work' since her show's c
> ancellation.
I have actually not read Jurisfiction! I will have to.
I wanted to take the metafiction approach since I believed that taking a much more bold-facedly meta approach would allow for characters to also be show more in the way of self-awareness. It would make breaking the fourth wall a little bit easier, and I thought that having been from failed continuities themselves could also give them some idea of what happens when the creative process slides downhill. I've noticed that several other writers use redeemed or atoning Sues as agents and thought to take it to something of a next step. If this is incompatible with the current continuity though, I understand and will take this into account.
> -You also talk about 'a character shield which is powered by t
> wo AAA batteries... protects a character from all harm... only
> for the hero designated by the writers'. Again, this assumes a
> completely different worldview than that used by the PPC: one
> in which writers wander into their fiction, and are known by t
> heir creations (and can issue technology to an entire genre, s
> omehow). I'll admit it's an amusing idea, and would work pefec
> tly in Jurisfiction, but not in the PPC.
One of my major sources of inspiration for this was *The Last Action Hero.* The idea of an Action Hero and his Archnemesis winding up in the real world, where the rules aren't decided by the pen of the author and the Hero isn't going to triumph all the time just because of authorial fiat really appealed to me. I thought the same could be applied to a Mary Sue. After all, I feel that John Smith himself would, in his home continuity, be walking a very fine line himself. There are after all, many similarities between an Action Movie Hero, and a Mary Sue.
> -You wrote over 500 words on their car. Here is what you actua
> lly needed to write: 'Instead of a normal Response Centre, Joh
> n and Ayumi use an old car, to make them more like a buddy cop
> movie'. That's what I mean by overkill. :)
Sure.
> -If your agents are in the Department of Floaters, their depar
> tment head is the Floating Hyacinth, who isn't prone to yellin
> g. 'the trope of an angry, yelling police chief' may well be c
> ommon, but it would be a big change to the PPC canon.
>
> -The Department of Floaters isn't just about what canon they w
> ork in - it's about what type of missions they tackle. From th
> e All-Purpose Department wiki page:
>
> The All-Purpose Department contains agents who are willing to
> work in only one fandom but accept all types of missions. Com
> pare to the Department of Floaters, whose agents may work in
> any fandom and take any type of mission, and the DMS and DBS'
> s Freelance Divisions, whose agents may work in any fandom but
> only do assassinations or exorcisms, respectively.
>
> So if you're only intending to tackle Mary-Sues, pop them in
> DMS-Freelance instead.
Will do!
> -Surprisingly, I have no problem with the idea of a portalling
> car. I'm not sure what the 'real' effect of the travel montage
> is, though - what do John and Ayumi actually experience? Do th
> ey sit in the car and watch it play out on the screen? Do they
> get teleported from scene to scene?
The effects of travel montages and what the characters experience actually were a bit of a joke even before I thought of this series. For instance, if the travel montage is meant to represent a long period of time where the characters are boarding a flight, then why do they pick up the conversation that they were having before the trip back up immediatey from where they left off the moment they get off the plane or the montage ends? My guess is that when that happens, travel montages are very nearly instant to the characters, or take *exactly* the same time they take us, the audience, to watch them occur!
> -'Typical for police dramas, both Ayumi and John carry badges.
> ' Uh... what canon are you writing for, again? Because it does
> n't sound like you want to write for the PPC at all.
>
> -I'm looking through the 'writing sample', and... you're not w
> riting the PPC. You don't mention anything from the PPC. Other
> than 'killing badfic', your story has nothing to do with the P
> PC.
>
> So... good news! To write a buddy cop show about John and Ayum
> i, badfic police extraordinaire, their quirky old car, and the
> ir shouty Chief who wants Their Badges And Guns You're Off The
> Case, you don't need Permission! :D You can write it, post it
> somewhere (I recommend fanfiction.net, though some prefer Arch
> ive of Our Own), and let people read it! I'm sure there are pe
> ople here in the PPC who'd love to beta it for you - folks who
> se interests include the intersection of anime and action - an
> d we'd be happy for you to plug it on the Board when it's up s
> o we can take a look.
If you guys are going to be OK with me publishing here, I'd really like to, PPC spinoff or not. If need be, I'll preface my stuff with a disclaimer stating that Watanabe & Smith is not a part of PPC Continuity, so that way there can be no confusion at all. After all, if I've got a disclaimer stating that the stunt driving that I haven't written yet isn't realistic there's always room for more disclaimers or notes.
> But it's not a PPC story, so it doesn't need PPC Permission. C
> ase... closed.
Alright, I'll bear that in mind.
Thank you very much. I'll get to work immediately.
~3DES.
Footnote 1: A determined troll could create a counterfeit key, upload it to the keyserver, sign messages with it, present the counterfeit key to you guys as the real one, and if nobody bothers to check the signatures, then they might be able to pass off as me to someone who doesn't check the signatures. An even more determined attacker might upload thousands of counterfeit keys to the keyserver all with the identity "TripleDES" on them as a crude form of a denial-of-service attack. A very, VERY determined attacker could hijack the DNS (not usually something I would trust your average pissed off fanficcer to be capable of doing, but it's not hard since DNS wasn't ever meant to be secure) when you attempt to look back and see if the signing key has changed and verify it against the original fingerprint I posted with messages of their own, which would be able to trick anyone who hadn't obtained my genuine, original public key. An adversary with state-level resources could spend a lot of computing power and time to generate a key that produces a fingerprint collision since PGP uses SHA-1 for the key fingerprints, but my threat model doesn't at this moment account for that kind of an attack. Until a sufficiently powerful computer that can efficiently solve the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem or my computer's cryptographically secure random number generator suffers a nonce collision since I use ECDSA which consumes randomness to make each signature, I do not believe crypto, Tor, or protocols to be the weak link in my own security.
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I make no comment on hS's Permission stuff. However, I do have some comments on his housekeeping section. Or rather, a suggestion.
hS suggests Google Docs for 3DES's Permission prompt and other writing. Unfortunately, I doubt that 3DES will find this acceptable. So I'm here to suggest some alternative formats that might be more acceptable. And yes, just to get this out of the way, all of these formats are mutable. If you're worried about someone putting words in your mouth... well, that's what the sig's for, innit? :-P
-TXT: Not ideal, formatting-wise, but fairly universal.
-Markdown: Readable as TXT should push come to shove, but DES can probably find a reasonable host that will compile it for him.
-HTML: Either compiled Markdown, or handwritten. Once again, I'm sure DES can find a reasonable host.
-DOC/DOCX: practically a standard by this point. Not ideal - for one thing, not viewable in a browser - but it gets the job done.
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Hash: SHA512
Hi Thoth,
This is just a very quick test to see what it would look like if I printed it full size on standard Letter size paper. I'm not constrained to using standard sizes of paper, but I chose Letter size since it would be easiest to print and tends to look alright if resized to A4, although A4 tends not to look so great if resized to Letter.
https://tripledes.ocloud.de/index.php/s/HDiiXy4TaIdt2u3
Let me know if you prefer it better this way, or the other way around, or you'd like me to try with a smaller paper size.
Since my NextCloud server has SSL/TLS with strong ciphers preferred, and this is just a very quick experiment to test formatting, I won't PGP sign this version.
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That does look a lot better, but... I get the nagging feeling there must be a better way.
I mean, given your total overkill nature, I'd suggest hosting HTML on FreeNet, but I don't think FreeNet has any good gateways to the regular internet, and asking everyone to go through FreeNet is obviously unacceptable.
This is a hard problem...
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Hey Thoth,
At one point I'd considered hosting using a Tor hidden service, or anonymous hosting on I2P. Unfortunately, both of them are difficult to access from the clearnet and inproxies to both Tor hidden services and Eepsites aren't the greatest, plus, you have to trust the inproxy, at which point even I have to ask myself why I'm going through the trouble. I'd asked around earlier on the chat, most people told me it'd be a flat out 'no' to use special software or special software configurations to view the files. So, I use a NextCloud provider, which at least allows me to display PDFs and to a limited extent, plaintext files.
Even though HTML and plaintext would resize to other monitors automatically, I like PDF for the way that I can be absolutely certain that what I see on my screen will be the same as what I see on someone else's, which is fairly important to me. The good news is though that I only need to change two settings to change the page and margin sizes, and I can quickly export both mobile friendly and printer friendly versions using a simple script operation. So it's not that much trouble for me to produce and upload two versions of the same thing.
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...Actually, I don't think you do have to trust an inproxy. Provided that we can trust your PGP key (and you've been working under the assumption that we can already), and you sign your fic, we can verify the sig and prove that you are, in fact, the person who wrote it. And yeah, special software configs are not acceptable.
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm pushing a bit hard on this, but PDF is Barely Acceptable, IMHO, and I'd really like to see if we can find a way to get your fic into a more readable format.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hello Thoth,
Inline:
> ...Actually, I don't think you do have to trust an inproxy. Pr
> ovided that we can trust your PGP key (and you've been working
> under the assumption that we can already), and you sign your f
> ic, we can verify the sig and prove that you are, in fact, the
> person who wrote it. And yeah, special software configs are no
> t acceptable.
Indeed, you're right about that we could continue to rely on detached signatures.
> I'm sorry if it seems like I'm pushing a bit hard on this, but
> PDF is Barely Acceptable, IMHO, and I'd really like to see if
> we can find a way to get your fic into a more readable format.
To reiterate, I very much prefer PDF because it is the best way for me to guarantee that you see what I see, and a way for me to bundle things in there such as font rendering and self-contained bookmarks. As time went on I had intended on using the medium itself to do things like formatting gags and other things that would have taken advantage of the ability to control formatting to the precision allowed by PDF.
If you're very adamant on having a plain text option, I can strip the formatting by hand (I use LaTeX) and release it as a .txt with no formatting whatsoever. This may omit content that I had planned. But if you're willing to download and read .txt files, you can request it by just asking me to post the plaintext of each chapter by chapter, and I will make it happen.
While I could get a provider with Webs, 000webhost, QQ, those hosts run content management systems and Web UIs that are incompatible with the security model I have since they routinely phone home to Google and Facebook, which I decided was unacceptable.
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I don't think I have much more to say - not much that's actually helpful, anyways, so this will be brief. But I think I might just know a provider you might find acceptable: neocities
They like SSL, (I... think the have a hidden service? not sure...), they're free, and they're paid for by premium memberships - NOT advertisers, or data sales. You do need to trust them to not be lying about that, but it's as good as you'll probably get.
Don't think it'll help much, but on the off chance...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hey Thoth,
Update on the situation, I'm trying to see if they'll let me register. Currently, I'm experiencing a redirect loop when trying to register so I'll contact service and see what they say.
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I'd be shocked if they didn't accept Tor users, but there IS a possibility. I hope not. :-(
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hey Thoth,
Excellent, I'll go and check them out, thank you for the link! No monetization of data is a big plus for me, I hadn't heard of them before. My HTML skills are a little rusty because I haven't used them in a long time but I think I can pick them back up in a couple weekends and afternoons. There may also be a way for me to export TeX to HTML, which also makes my life a lot easier.
I'll continue to PGP sign my official releases, so this might help somewhat.
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
... And I just found the answer to the question I was going to ask, which is how much storage space you get with a free account. The answer appears to be 1G, which is bloody phenomenal compared to the 20Mb I've got over on Tripod. I haven't nearly filled that yet, thanks in part to carefully managing how many images I actually store there, but dang, not having to even think about it would be nice!
I might just move—the Lost Tales, at least, and maybe my own stuff, too. It won't be soon, because I don't have time right now, but I know the ads on Tripod are an issue for people without adblock, and it's been a long time since I could happily recommend the service to anyone else.
I reckon they're better than Webs, too.
~Neshomeh
I'm kind of tempted to dual-host the Webplex for a while, once I've revamped it - see which version works better. Thanks for the heads-up.
hS
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hi Thoth,
I thought about it and decided I'd be able to meet you halfway. I usually structure my stuff so that I can change it quickly by making template changes if I have to, so let me see about putting out two versions, one optimized for display on tablets and mobile devices, and another optimized for display on a monitor. If you guys really want, I could make a third in simple plain text as a 'low bandwidth' option, since I understand that some of us, myself included, need to be operating on limited amounts of bandwidth and slow connections.
My NextCloud provider limits the number of lines of a .txt file that I can display on the page preview, so you would have to download it (I know this won't sit right with most) and I'd have to hand-format it, but I would be happy to do this if you guys prefer it that way.
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
As a follow up:
I would really like to thank you guys for staying with me on this. I should have looked at it from your point of view earlier, and I understand now that accepting big, strange PDF files from strange people who use Tor, observe even stranger use habits and employ copious amounts of strange crypto is very sketchy, and that I'm asking a lot from all of you to click the links when conventional wisdom is usually 'never click suspicious links from strangers.'
I understand you guys have had some very bad experiences in the past with people who use Tor. I use Tor for my own protection against things such as doxxing, and PGP with Brainpool P-512r1 keys for message authentication and non-repudiation, since I believe ECDSA is, as of this time reasonably secure, since this message BB does not have any TLS/SSL and leaks IP addresses to the world.
I promise I will be on my best behaviour at all times, and ask for your patience and understanding.
~3DES.
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
we had a vague discussion or two about the concept of a buddy-cop style spinoff, but I haven't seen this document before (I might've gotten a copy that I didn't have time to open).
I certainly didn't sign off on this.
(I also don't have an opinion on it at the moment)
- - Tomash
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
I understand.
I think when I sent it to you, I may have converted back into to base64 or encrypted it directly with your public key rather than encrypting it symmetrically and sending the ciphertext in the plain, since my E-mail provider doesn't support IMAP/SMTP with Thunderbird. It may not open cleanly, if that's the case just discard it.
I apologize for the inconvenience.
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Can you please explain why you think a Permission request requires a /58 page/ PDF? It should come in at under 2000 words! What have you /got/ in there?
I'm aware that I could look. But I'm not terribly inclined to just open up an oversized file from someone who's obviously tech-savvy. It just rings all manner of alarm bells.
hS
And a little endearing, too, assuming that TripleDES isn't trying to hack us and instead is just trying too hard.
Heh, to think of it, Triple came aBoard before I did and I haven't even made one attempt yet at getting Permission. Slow down a little bit, my dude. Get to know the place better. Read a lot of the Wiki and get a general feel for us. Maybe then you can try again.
-Twistey
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hi Twistedwindowpane,
No, I'm definitely not trying to hack you! I just use the Tor anonymizing network for my own protection against doxxing and also for my own privacy, especially because this board publicly displays the IP address of everyone who posts on it.
Because this board doesn't have SSL or TLS or any sort of security, I don't want someone to go around posing as me, which is why I also PGP-sign my messages. The risk is especially great for me, because for most people that don't have large budgets and the powers of a court subpoena (and in some cases, even for those that do), it is very difficult to tell one Tor user from another.
I don't want to end up getting kicked out from the PPC just because somebody else decided to download Tor Browser, type "TripleDES" into the Author: field, and throw around provocative and insulting comments to the community. Or, more likely because someone else trolls or spams the board again using Tor to mask their identity.
Tomash has an excellent writeup on Public Key signatures here, on this very board.
http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?id=199610;article=295080;search_term=PGP
I use a slightly different algorithm than he does (he uses RSA-4096 and SHA-256, I use Brainpool P-512r1 and SHA-512) so my signatures appear different than his do, but otherwise, they achieve the same goal. Provided you have my real, genuine key, it authenticates me to you, ensures that if anyone tampers with the message I write, it can be detected and also, that I can't 'take back' or repudiate what I sign at a later date. Of course, the hard part then, is that you have to be sure you have the real key that belongs to the real me, and not a counterfeit one that's been issued in my name!
Moving back on topic, yes, I do try very hard. I'll see what comes out of this. I don't intend on leaving unless you guys feel that you're no longer comfortable having me around or vice versa, so I hope to stick around.
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I looked in the PDF, and I'm pretty sure that the reason it's so big is that 3DES is using a very large font size. Seriously: I'm reading this on my phone, and I never had to zoom in on the text at all.
As for concerns about the file... By default it will open in a PDF.js window embedded in the webpage 3DES linked you to. So for it to damage your computer, it would not only have to find an exploit in PDF.js, it would also have to break your browser's sandbox.
TL;DR, the PDF is safe to read on the webpage. If you're really paranoid, I can check the PDF sources, but I find it unlikely that there is any danger there whatsoever.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Thank you, Thoth. I appreciate you being willing to look into it!
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Hi Huinesoron,
For convenience, I've used a template that is optimized to display on E-book readers and mobile devices. This meant using a small page size with an oversized typeface, as well as a font that offered generous spacing between characters to avoid the characters intersecting when viewed on small or dimly lit screens. I also was generous with the whitespace for pagebreaks and headers to allow for easier navigation within the document file. As a result, each page only has a relatively small amount of text, compared to what you would find on a letter sized page with a more efficient typeface. I also felt that using PDF would be the best choice rather than .epub, since the NextCloud server that I use offers an integrated PDF viewer. This would also ensure that what I saw on my preview would be true to what anyone else saw on theirs.
Some of the content as well has to do with the background of why I made the choices I did when designing the characters, as well as the historical basis in which I made the selections for them. This is because of the genre and aesthetic I've been trying to achieve, since Watanabe & Smith is designed to be a homage to a few of the "Buddy Cop" TV shows of the 1970s to the 1980s. This is not essential to the story itself, and is more for future reference and understanding where I plan to go with the series in the future.
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It looks like you're talking about jumping in with something approximating a PPC AU. That's interesting enough that I'll look over your 61 pages in the morning; I glanced through it, and there's some points I want to raise when I've had a closer look.
Don't know if I'll put the Permission hat on for that; it depends on what I read, to be honest.
hS
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hey Huinesoron,
Something like that. Since I know a lot of people use the net from their phones and tablets, I wanted to take it easy on them.
I understand. I'll have my fingers crossed.
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The Permission process has the format it has for a reason.
I really suggest you take a look at the Wiki page we've got on it, because right now you're demonstrating pretty solidly that you aren't following Da Rules.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hello Ix,
As per the PPC Wiki entry, I looked at the following under "What to include in a Permission Request."
> Brief bios of your agents, about 200 words minimum (though
> up to ~400 is okay). This is so the Permission Givers can chec
> k that they're not blatant Sues or Stus. Please touch on:
> Basic info - Name, species, age, sex/gender, home continuum, e
> tc.
Done. John Smith's home continuity is on page 13 of the PDF, Ayumi's is on page 20 of the PDF, and I've included hyperlinks to the different sections to make it easy to navigate with the bookmarks. The Table of Contents is clickable and the PDF is bookmarked. I've included a lot of information about them and how they came to be kicked out of or left their home continuities, so that you can draw your own conclusions.
I understand I may have gone over budget in word count, but I also felt it was important to explain why as well as some of the background of why I made the choices I did, since this is a homage to a particular genre, and those genres are products of their time. For example, I didn't just pick the Dodge Monaco because it was a cool car (although I personally find the Dodge Monaco a VERY cool automobile!), but because it was an icon of the California Highway Patrol during the 1970s.
> Appearance - What they look like and other physical tra
> its.
Done. They are both described in simile (typical for hard-boiled fiction) on Page 39 of the PDF, in-fic. Ayumi is described in a bit more detail in her own respective section. I realize now there is a mistake on one of the pages that I should have read over, on Page 39 of the PDF it should read "Even a hard-boiled private eye monologue that talked like a simile would've resorted *TO* florid prose." D'oh! I'll fix that next release, sorry about that.
> Personality - Basic demeanor, outlook, habits, likes an
> d dislikes, etc.
> History - Background information such as where they com
> e from, how they joined the PPC, family relations, important f
> ormative experiences, etc. The character's backstory should in
> form their personality and appearancein particular, personalit
> y traits and abilities should be justified by the history.
Done and done. The entirety of how they left their respective home continuities is described in great detail. For formative experiences, Ayumi has quite a number of them between being able to finally break out of her role that her authors locked her into for four seasons of the same show, and John Smith has watched his movie career collapse. More of their actual behaviour and chemistry together is shown in the first chapter of the story, so I hope that that should demonstrate things a bit more.
> Any other traits or abilities we should know about.
Done. Each of the bios includes a trivia section which includes the types of (quirky) powers that they have. I tried to avoid going for standard powers (super speed, invincibility, etc), and simply go for powers that made sense in meta, such as Ayumi creating letters at her feet in a badly rendered font whenever she speaks Japanese because of the quality of the dub, and those badly rendered fonts being 'very sharp' because they were done in poor quality freeware.
> The department you intend to place them in. A complete
> list of existing departments can be found here.
Done. First line on Page 24 of the PDF, the Department of Floaters. I've also made a shoutout to the DoSAT. The avoidance of using Portal Technology is because I felt it would be more fitting to use a travel montage, which were also staples of action adventure films of yesteryear, and can be made to work with the rule of funny. Just think about all the trouble that characters could get into as they try to trace a line across a map, or maybe there is some potential to play it for drama when they realize they need to get somewhere in a hurry but can't just throw a montage down out of nowhere!
> A link to the writing samples you created or the samples th
> emselves copied directly into your post. We want to see how we
> ll you write mechanically, and we really want to see whether y
> ou can write three-dimensional, entertaining characters in a s
> tyle that works for the PPC.
Done. A writing sample is included starting on Page 31 of the PDF. It is the first chapter of my proposed spinoff.
> As mentioned above, your samples
> should be based on a control prompt and a creative or random p
> rompt, discussed in further detail in the Permission Prompt Gu
> idelines.
I used the following two:
3, 3, Agents are transferred to a new department.
5, 3, One agent discloses a secret.
These are covered in more detail in the story, starting on Page 38 of the PDF.
> A link to the badfic you intend to tackle as your first mis
> sion, and a sentence or two explaining why it's bad. This is s
> o we can make sure you've got an eye for what makes a good mission.
I'll actually be writing my own bad fanfiction for this, but I've included a short paragraph about what I'll be doing on Page 10 of the PDF, and how I intend to make it bad. I'm also hoping to finish with an after-action report, as shown by the place holder on page 56 of the PDF.
I believe (to a given degree, thanks to Tor and other privacy tools, but for security reasons I cannot name them all) that I am anonymous to the majority of bad fic authors. Because of this, I feel like it isn't my place to criticize them from a safe, comfortable distance behind their backs, especially given that many of these bad fanfiction authors could have written their bad fanfiction when they were younger and have since moved past them. Or they could still be young and impressionable, and taking huge amounts of flak and ridicule from someone anonymous who they can't trace and can't explain themselves to isn't something I'd feel proud of, as someone who has in the past written bad fanfiction, and would feel very upset if someone behind a several layers of crypto-anonymity dragged it back up to make fun of something I let go a long time back.
This is why I'll be writing my own bad fanfiction, so it's something even bad fanfiction authors would be able to laugh at, and possibly, maybe even identify with and realize that they may make the same mistakes as well, without being mean-spirited.
> The names of your beta reader or readers.
I'd like to get a beta reader, and now that I have the infrastructure set up for it hopefully this should make things much easier. I will definitely list them in future installments.
I hope that this may clarify things somewhat. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.
~3DES.
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And... hat isn't on, but mate, I think you should also stick around a bit longer so people get to know you beyond "That guy who shows off with his PCP signatures".