The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

I mean, *this* is coming back. Because Discord is a thing, and that's how Discord does it. (although /me works on PC...)

But again, I just have a bizarre fascination with this sort of thing. Dunno why. Probably the same reason I trawl MUDs and look at logs of ancient usenet flamewars. Which are, on occasion, pretty hilarious (I saw a post about how we'd all be running HURD on our RISC machines. :-P)

Oooh, Redwall! My impression from memory is that it's far more in the line of "showing kids that dragons can be fought" line than it is the "unnecessary GrimDark" line. I think it got the GrimDark reputation because when melodramatic wee cubs turn into melodramatic teenagers*, they revisit their haunts with new tools. There's battle and sacrifice, but it's not generally gory, I don't think.

Though I'd steer him (and everyone!) away from Redclaw.

I'm so glad to hear you're doing well and the Doomsprout and other offspring and Warcabbage as well. And congrats on hopeful new rabbit! They're pretty great pets.





*This isn't a callout, or at least only a very little and self-deprecating one. I have always had a flair for the melodramatic. Angsty one-shots for the win!

I know a little about knitting, but I hadn’t heard of knitting looms! How do they work?

Also, where did you learn carpentry? I am currently learning more about stage carpentry so I can be a more competent and well-rounded theater tech person, so I’m curious where/how people pick up general carpentry skills.

Now with visual aids and 100% fewer minis! Here's the shareable link, hope you enjoy it!

There were only a few things Tom Andrews ever really took seriously. Programming was one of them: when you knew full-well that a screw-up could summon Cthulhu, it was hard not to. He claimed to take video games seriously, but there was a chance he was doing that ironically, in which case it didn’t count.

But he did take his canon studies seriously. Almost as seriously as Thoth did. And so in those rare times when their schedules aligned, the two partners might be found alongside one another, lost in books, only looking up to question one another. Thoth occasionally inquiring to Tom about “ancient” earth culture, and Tom asking for clarification on 40k minutiae.

As he was just about to.

“Thoth?”

“Hm?” The giant man looked up from his copy of Dragonflight. He had finally stopped wearing his armour casually (with some thanks to Tom, who had been required to assist in getting it off the first time), although the robe and sweatpants he had taken to instead were almost as odd. It didn’t make him meaningfully less intimidating to most, however. With that build, it was unlikely there was much that could.

People, however, could adjust to anything, and it was rare for Thoth to intimidate Tom anymore. “I was just reading through this stack, and I’ve noticed that there are a ton of different interpretations of what the Codex Astartes is. I assume you’ve read it, and I was wondering… which one is right?”

Thoth stared into the distance for a moment, thinking. Then slowly, deliberately, he spoke. “...Yes.”

“What.”

“Tom, what his the primary rule of 40k canon?”

“That everything is canon and that nothing is tr— oh.” Tom promptly smacked himself over the head with a copy of Horus Rising. “But wait. Then… what do you remember about it?”

Thoth once again took the time to choose his next words carefully. “I presume most 40k characters have a strong binding to a particular interpretation of certain events and objects—this holds true for myself with burning of Prospero, among others. But the Codex Astartes is not such an entity for me. I recall it as a tactical and logistical doctrine. At the same time, I have some sort of remnant recollections of it as some sort of Space Marine ‘bible’, an absurd text followed to the very letter by such chapters as the Ultramarines. As I am not strongly linked to it, it seems interpretation within canon is allowed to drift in my presence.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’ve actually experienced multiple variants of the Codex?” said Tom.

“That is what I surmise from the multiple memories I have of it, yes.”

“Wait. Then that means… you’ve lived in multiple alternate universes. You’re like some kind of Grand Unified Thoth! That’s AWESOME!”

Thoth sighed. “I do not believe that’s how it works—by my reckoning, my canon merely has been in flux around me—but I technically cannot refute it.”

Tom got up, grinning. “I’m gonna get the party streamers. How else can we celebrate this reunion of Thoths?”

~~

Yes, I'm once again stretching the prompt to the breaking point to tell a story that the prompt gave me the idea for despite it arguably not fitting. :-P. I had fun with it, I hope you lot do too.

It's the book Agent Suicide comes from, after all. And it's very, very good.

~Neshomeh

I think you mean what we in the West know as black tea? Red tea over here is rooibos, Aspalathus linearis, not oxidized Camellia sinensis. {= )

(I don't actually like rooibos very much, myself, but it can be a good tea alternative for those who prefer to avoid caffeine.)

Also worth noting: some electric kettles, such as mine, come with temperatures settings. I'm usually too lazy to bother, though, since I tend to default to bagged tea I don't have to fuss over so much. >.>

Which reminds me, it's time for my morning tea! But I'm out of Earl Grey. What will I do? I don't know. {= (

~Neshomeh

And is more like how I am in explaining things, natch. =P
"I can't phrase this any better than what's already in the source material, but I don't want to just copy&paste everything - that's plagiarism!" - when explaining things about Young Wizards to my RP friends.

On this day, May 2nd, in 1998, Harry Potter defeated Lord Voldemort for good. Many brave witches and wizards who stayed to defend the castle lost their lives in the Battle of Hogwarts.

Today, we celebrate everything we love about the books we read as children.

Harry Potter taught me about friendship and bravery.

Harry Potter taught me about loyalty and kindness.

Harry Potter taught me about magic.

*raises wand*
Lumos.

In all seriousness, yes you could use a thermometer. Once you do it enough, you will get an sort of intuitive sense for where the water is at. A good way without a thermometer is to just look at the water. When the water is churning slightly, not at full boil (that's actually higher than 100 C), that's for red tea, if there are small bubbles in the water, but no churning, that's good for Oolong. If you place your hand a couple of inches above the water and there is some heat and condensation on your palm, that's good for green tea (but one should wait an extra 20 seconds just in case). But, a thermometer will always be more accurate and you won't make mistakes with one.

... anything you do will catch on, simply because there's no-one who remembers before it was there. ^_^

I used to put all of my actions in slashes...

/Demonstrates that/

... but at some point I switched over to square brackets. [Shrugs] Don't know why; I come from the time when most people used *this*, so I may just have been distinguishing myself.

hS

But I have a longstanding history of reading stuff before I'm supposed to (I read Snow Crash in 6th grade, so...).

OTOH, I got them for my cousins when they were around that age, and nobody complained and they liked them. So I'd say that's the time.

They should be fine for the Doomsprout. :-P

Thing is, your mess caught on. :-P

I'm not firmly convinced that anyone here actually knows what they're doing, really. I certainly don't. I'm pretty sure I'm messing something up horribly, but people seem to like my work, so I guess I must be doing something right...

/shrug

Speaking of weird textual habits, there's one. Ever noticed how you can tell where people come from by what weird textual quirks they've picked up? if they /me, they're probably IRCers. :wave, they're MUDers. #IFDEF RANT or /rant, they've likely got some sort of programming background (although those are getting more widespread). Emoticons that start with a curly brace, and it's probably Neshomeh. :-P

-The Newbies missions aren't actually finished! I have Lou and Nar's final mission in a half-completed state. I started it back in '07, and last touched it in... stars, 2014, maybe?

-There was a... two, three year gap in the middle of The Reorganisation, during which my cowriter left. When I came back to it, I had to cobble together the whole thing by myself. If you read it, you'll find that almost every plot thread was set into motion by the end of chapter 6; everything after that was me trying to tie things up.

-Swan's Egg was a nightmare. The DIO part was heavily rewritten following backlash on the Board, and the final part with people receiving the Message was originally going to be a cowrite - except I was too secretive, and once they found out what I was asking them to write none of my cowriters wanted to do it any more. That trilogy is definitely the biggest crash-and-burn I've had in my time writing.

From your end of time, it looks like I just effortlessly built a plinth on which to sit in my glory, or whatever metaphor floats your walnut. From my end, though, what you see is just the ramshackle collection of ideas that I actually got round to writing down, finishing, and publishing. I don't know if that helps?

Also occasionally people drop things on my head. Once upon a time it was bjam with cupcakes; now it's you with buckets of water. The more things change, the more I'm all sodden now. ^_~

hS

Yeah, I think the terrifying thing (for some of us, at least) has a little bit to do with Being A Fan. Which I will absolutely confess to: yours the first spinoffs I actually read after TOS, and I absolutely adore Tales From DoGA, Newbies, Swan's Egg, and Lofty Skies/Crashing Down/The Reorganization.

So... that doesn't make you any less scary, I will admit.

Anyways, I can't spend an entire post fanboying (yes you can (shut up, me)), so I suppose I should say something else...

Um.

Wow, I am really bad at this. Perhaps I'll think of something later. :-P

I have been since late 2002, when I needed an email address to discuss the upcoming Two Towers movie with a schoolfriend. I joined the PPC on Talk Like a Pirate Day 2003, and you haven't been able to shake me off since. ^^ I wound up here because someone pointed me at the Board in a review of one of my fics, and quickly made a whole bunch of friends (this was back in the days of Livejournal and MSN Messenger; Kaitlyn has discussed what that was like). Ten years ago now, I got married to one of them. ^^ I love this place and the spirit it still has, even if it is filled entirely with newbies (you know... people who joined in 2005 or later!).

I have a tendency towards deep geekery, of the type that involves mass fanon generation: I have a whole website devoted to crackpot theories on my primary fandom (Middle-earth, now and forever), and at various times in the past have concocted whole rickety fanon edifices around Harry Potter (the accepted history of North American magic is a classic 'written by the victors' scenario, and President Pickles' evil MACUSA refuses to acknowledge the wealth of native and black magic on the continent), Young Wizards (that one's still going on), and... a whole bunch of other stuff, to be honest. My writings for the PPC are very much the same thing, with the advantage(???) that my crazy theories end up becoming canon.

When not holding forth on obscure and pointless trivia, I have pretty much the least interesting science job you can imagine: I'm a computer-based chemist specialising in compliance with laws and regulations. Which... pretty much means I spend my time researching and holding forth on obscure and pointless trivia. Funny how that works! :D

I have trouble coping in large groups or fast-moving situations; that's one of the reasons for my perennial absence from the various chats. I am famously bad at finishing projects - most of my cowriters leave the PPC before we actually finish anything, and I have one mission that's still technically ongoing from 2005. I never say anything in ten words if a thousand will do. And when, about a year ago, I needed to email Miss Cam about something, I was exactly as terrified as all of you are around me. ;)

hS

[Dramatic sigh] I held out some hope that the curse had moved onto someone else, but in my heart of hearts I knew that this was Huinesoron Is Terrifying Episode 967: Those Pointy-Eyed Smileys Must Be Hiding Something.

(They are, actually - they're a homage to my wife and a deep cut into PPC history. But as I was never actually a Knight Who Goes ^^, I shall betray no further confidences. ^~)

hS

Currently working on the fifth chapter now. This is where things really kick into gear a bit, and the nature of Siobhan's Ordeal becomes clear.