The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

If Toinnninnnaneinneheeannion ever posts on the board, don't trust him.

Also, yark is now the god of the reptilian humanoids, and their greeting/goodbye is Bast chauble!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=462KBuAhncU

a source of research for proper canon-fixing
http://thomasandfriends.wikia.com/wiki/ThomasandFriends_Wiki

be warned, this video is gory. really gory. like, childhood destroying, innocence-crushing gory.

"We met during the Halloween Party. I was dressed in the very costume that we discussed."

Tom grinned. "That was some party."

"If I did not know it impossible, I would say The Architect of Fate himself had a hand in it. But His designs are... less agreeable."

"I'll say. Tzeentch is not an agreeable god." Tom shivered. "But still more agreeable than that Naga!Harry fic. Hats off to whoever tackled that thing, because just hearing about it made me ill."

((Yes, that's a real badfic. Geema found it.))

I'm suddenly reminded of the Harry Potter predictive keyboard chapter... and now I want to see something like that for a PPC mission.

I know we tried something like that a while back, but the itch is biting at me again. I blame you. :P

Also I am back from my trip, so that's good. =D

Ix swallowed and shook her head, taking a half step back in a feeble attempt to hide behind Charlotte. Seeing as how she was a head taller than her partner, this didn't exactly work too well.

"Wait a second..." Charlotte looked between Ix, Tom, and Thoth curiously. "You guys have met before? When did that happen?"

"Don't worry about bothering us. We've got nowhere to be. Unless a Sue needs killing..."

Thoth nodded. "Indeed. And talking to you may well grant unexpected insights."

"As for Thoth dressing up... yeah, it was... interesting," said Tom. "I've never seen two people form a drunken friendship that fast. ...Wait a minute. Ix, was it? You were there! You can talk about it. And about how your costume made—"

"Do not speak ill of those who are not with us, Tom," Thoth cut in icily. "And remember that perhaps some things are better left unspoken of." He turned a cold gaze on Ix. "I trust that you will show more sense than my partner on that front. If you do, in fact, wish to speak."

Because the "I am only twelve / I am new at this" question seemed like a good one to have.

~Neshomeh

...and went straight for the hamantaschen.

"No, I'm serious," Dawn McKenna said. She was dressed as the Eleventh Doctor, and had been frequently playing with her bowtie, playing with her fez, and gleefully telling her former partner to "Come along, Pond!" since putting the costume on. "Last year I got all of two poppy seed ones. Only the apricot was left by the end, and I didn't want to make some myself, so that was that. It was sad."

"It disappointed you," T'Zar corrected. She moved surprisingly easily in the short skirt and heeled boots: it was the ginger wig that she occasionally scratched at or pushed carefully out of her face.

"Well, yeah," Dawn said. "That's what I meant, Pond." She grinned. "This is so much fun!"

"Better than being Thor last year?" Abaddon asked. In keeping with his frequent Time Lord theme (and, of course, with his friends), he'd come dressed as the Doctor as well. The Thirteenth, specifically.

Dawn shrugged. "Nah, just different. Ooh, chocolate-poppy seed! How have I never seen that before? And--wait, is that...is that halvah?"

T'Zar picked one up immediately, smelling it briefly before she took a bite. "It is. It is also...quite pleasant to the taste."

"Because you like the stuff," Abaddon pointed out. His words aside, he took two and ate them in short order. "Not bad!" Continuing down the table to snag a napkin for T'Zar, he managed to bump into someone. "Oh! So sorry..."

--
Hamantaschen are triangular cookies with every filling you could ever think of, by now. Halvah is sweetened, flaky sesame seed paste, and can be a bit of an acquired taste for some. It also comes in many varieties by now.

I mean, I have no idea HOW it's deep, but it clearly is, right?

hS

My favorite one was "Humanity - Humanity - Diverwing-twistedwindowpane,Thu Aug 31 9:58am".

On the one hand, it's clearly false and made-up, but on the other hand the author (from the looks of things) thought is was true and meant for it to be taken seriously.

This seems like an interesting edge case in the "fiction" category.

"Sounds like the last time you dressed up was wild. I wish I could have seen it."

Ix was feeling very uncomfortable now; she was certain the only thing keeping her from further embarrassment was the mask keeping Thoth from recognizing her.

"Lottie, come on, she said, tugging Charlotte's arm again. "Please, let's not bother them—"

"I'm not bothering them," Charlotte said crossly. "You go on and get food, but I want to stay and chat for a bit."

"Don't worry about it. I don't think either of us mind especially." He looked to his partner in askance.

"Discussion is indeed part of my intent in being here," Thoth confirmed.

"See? Told ya." Tom chuckled. "Anyways, he's only upset about that specific costume because he doesn't want to go as a Space Wolf again. Still amazed I convinced him it was a good idea to begin with."

"It was... galling." Thoth admitted. "The shame. The distaste for the costum. The women coming onto me..."

"It was one girl, Thoth."

"One was far too many. Especially when that one throws up on you."

Thanks to hS for renaming the draft.

The wiki page Badficcer linked to sections "I'm only twelve..." and "You don't have to be so hard on beginning writers. .." of the historic FAQ that don't have equivalents in the new FAQ: For Other People. Somebody may want to do something about that.

In case somebody wants to check whether the links still make sense in context:
What links to FAQ: For Other People
What links to FAQ: For Other People/historic
What links to FAQ: For Other People/Draft

HG

Charlotte dragged Ix over to the food table, red gown flapping in her wake. She paused when she overheard Thoth, and turned. “Hey, what’s wrong with wearing a costume?”

Ix froze when she realized who it was, and she tried to casually tug Charlotte back. “Lottie, let’s not interrupt—“

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the PPC Board were entirely made up of Artificial Intelligences? (Y'know, rather than just three or four of us...) Well, it's time to find out! I put together a couple of compilations of post titles (the entirety of 2016, plus May 2017 to the present), and fed them into a textgenrnn neural network (as seen here; search the page for the phrase 'Colaboratory Notebook' to find a version that runs in Google Drive).

For those who haven't run into the phenomenon before, neural networks are AIs that can take an input file - such as ~25,000 subject lines from the PPC - and learn to imitate it. (For many examples, and wild hilarity, you should definitely pay a visit to AI Weirdness/LewisAndQuark, Janelle Shane's blog of her neural net experiments.) So I had high hopes that this net would be able to churn out PPC-like subject lines in no time!

Things... got off to a bad start:

I mo ten te to to te no tee to to no to te ne ne ne i to ne no no ne ne te ae ne ne ne ne ne no ne na te ne ne ne na (nm)-Toinnninnnaneinneheeannion,Tur Jan 22

Okay, fine; apparently learning the rules of the English Language from a bunch of random text isn't that easy. But luckily, the net is able to boost its learning ability by looking through the dataset multiple times, and it soon started to figure things out.

Horry, dead... This one!-Snowy the Sane Fangirl,Sat Aug 3 7:07pm
Here who me in the same a be a be a bit the same to some the someone of the same to me work.-Huinesoron, Wed Mar3 11:58PM
I seem the someone who me some to a can someone as a work.-Huinesoron, Wed Mar3 7:54PM
I am someone who me to some the same to work.-Huinesoron, Thu Apr8 11:58PM

In the interests of full disclosure: the net has different 'temperature settings', which determine how much it experiments - how likely it is to stray from the most PPC-like next character in order to try and find something more interesting. In general, the highly-repetitive lines I'm posting are from low-creativity modes, while the ones with broken words are high-creativity. At one point, ultra-low creativity produced 10 instances of I don't think so...-Matt Cipher in a row.

Also: yes, the AI in low-creativity mode thinks that I post a lot. Those three 'Huinesoron' results came out one after another.

It also thinks that we have a thing for shovels:

I'm getting the point the shovel.-Neshomeh, Sat May22 5:12PM
Wait, you shovel!-Badger421, Shi Sep16 10:23AM
I see your shovel.-Voyd, Sat May22 3:27PM

And trolls. We care deeply about trolls:

I don't know I'm still be have a bad the troll.-Iximaz, Sat May22 7:41PM
I think I can see the trolls. (nm)-Hardric, Thu Jan29 1:25AM
I am not sure the statement to the troll. - Sergio Turbo, Thu Feb 19 10:01AM
The record to the trolls. - Huinesoron, Thu Mar 4 12:13PM
I just want to no began Troll. =] (nm)-Scapegrace, Tue Apr13 10:02PM

And it can get a bit... self-referential at times:

"I might be a literal that." - Storme Hawk, Thu Apr 1 1:39PM
It's a comment. - Hardric, Thu Jan 1 12:11AM
"Well, that was me." - Iximaz, Tue Mar 30 4:26PM

It managed to catch on to our influx of newbies, with a whole string of Hello newbie posts under different names. But... it hasn't twigged that only certain people are newbies:

I am a newbie about the same time to me. (nm)-Huinesoron,Tue Jan 23 10:07am
Sorry for the first impressions-Tomash,Sun Mar 25 11:47am
I am a newbie about the answer things that it's the only a good idea this time there. :) (nm)-Iximaz,Tue Jun 27 12:00pm

Still thinking about me a lot?

I know what I don't know that was me.-Huinesoron, Thu Jul1 10:01AM
I was me to meet you.-Huinesoron, Tue Mar23 10:19AM
I am not a team for the spoilers. - Huinesoron, Tue Jun 1 9:11AM

That's a yes, boss. (As it happens, I was me to meet you. How did it know?)

It had a bunch of proposals for new creative curses:

From the greeting!-SkarmorySilver, Fri Mar12 10:22AM
Hail French...-sonofheaven176, Mon Mar15 1:45AM
For the PPC.-Huinesoron,Mon Dec 11 5:27am

And also some... interesting suggestions for/from various people:

You want to remelt.-Alleb, Tue Aug31 8:40PM
I have to flag a lot. - Larfen J. Stocke, esq, Sun Apr 11 11:07PM
Pokemon Tournament Six - Agent Hi! - N. Harmonik, Wed May 12 3:20AM

I assume 'Agent Hi!' will be the theme of the 6th Sunflower Cup...

"?"-SeaTurtle, Mon Jan12 10:42PM

But mostly, it excelled at posting really cryptic messages that seem to come so close to meaning something:

Music Karon Interesting home, frive the brainbornal line is rooms! (nm)-Mattman The Comet, Sat Oct16 6:14PM
Re: When anybody, so so 3 6:5'82:-T-Matt Cipher, Sun Nov7 10:53PM
Is the only one Crowressings! (nm)-Thoth,Sat Mar 10 10:47am
Humanity - Humanity - Diverwing-twistedwindowpane,Thu Aug 31 9:58am
Woooow, that is a missthing that ever specius was.-Zingenmir,Sat May 20 4:14pm
edit, the real question.-Huinesoron,Mon Dec 18 3:30pm
Even more more unto yark, I go..."-Bast chauble!!-Ronionor,Mon Sep 11 7:09am
It was spowdd (nm) (nm)-Tomash,Sun Mar 11 8:10pm

I'm particularly fond of its attempts to invent new Boarders. T-Matt Cipher sounds like a scifi future version, and Ronionor is obviously an evil version of short-lived Boarder Ronion. I know I saw a twistedwindowpine somewhere in the output, too.

I'll leave you with two final posts. One, a request - a plea - from the AI:

Thanks, hope please. - Hardric, Tue May 18 9:55PM

And two, what I can only assume is its future plan for the PPC:

More computers series that handle the mission.-Hieronymus Graubart,Tue Jul 4 4:41pm

hS, not a team for the spoilers

"Anthropology," said Thoth. "I consider it research into ancient religions." He cast his eyes about the room. "Although it seems that we should have come in costume."

"Well I was going to," Tom replied huffily, "when you decided to torch my costume."

"To save your life. When I discovered that Talia and Dagger had started a betting pool over who was going to beat you up first."

"Well, if you're so into the costuming thing, why don't you wear one? You still have your Halloween cost—"

"Under. No. Circumstances."

Tom shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'm really just here for the food."

And what's more, I'm absolutely sure I've learned a word for that in my poetry class. But as that was over a year ago the memories are not fresh, and of course now that I need them the textbooks are nowhere to be found.

But if I don't remember sometime today I'll consult with my poetry professor, because I'm sure he'd know and now it's bugging me.