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Are you wanting input/drafts edited into those draft pages, or here on the Board?

—doctorlit, wanting to help if he can, but feeling inadequate

"Oooh, this one's cute, don't you think?" Alice pulled an off-white sweater from the shelf and held it up to me to see how it looked.

"Alice, you know I don't know the first thing about fashion," I sighed. "Feel free to dress me up however you like, though."

Alice pouted and put the sweater back. "But Bella, I want this to be about you, not me."

I smiled sheepishly. "I don't really do much for fun except read; I guess I thought going shopping with you would be more..." I gestured vaguely with my hands. "Social."

Alice caught my hand and pressed a kiss to it; her lips were icy cold against my skin and I shivered. "You know I'd be happy to read together with you, too," she said. "Just os long as we're togeth—" She paused, getting that glassy-eyed look that meant she was seeing a vision of the future. "You're about to get a phone call from her," she said, her lip curling.

"Leah has a name, you know," I said as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. A second later, it began to vibrate, and I answered it. "Hey, Leah!"

"Bella!" Leah said. "Listen, are you busy right now? I was thinking maybe we could catch a movie and get lunch."

Alice frowned at me.

"Sorry, Leah, I can't right now," I said, and Alice's face brightened. "I'm on a date—but I'm free tomorrow."

Alice's frown returned.

"Tomorrow works great!" Leah said. "I'll text you the details. You're the best."

"No, you're the best," I said, grinning. "Alright, talk to you later."

"Why do you hang out with her so much?" Alice said, folding her arms. "You two have nothing in common."

"Leah and I've been friends since we were little, Alice, you know that," I said, pulling a shirt off the rack. "Look, how about this one?"

"Orange is totally not your color, Bells," Alice said. "And stop trying to distract me."

"I don't want to have this conversation in the middle of the store," I said, glancing over my shoulder.

Alice pursed her lips. "Fine. When we get home?"

"Where your entire family can hear?"

"Fine, your home?"

"Fine," I snapped, and threw the shirt back down on the shelf.

Gonna be going for something gimmicky here. No idea how well it'll actually work, but whatever. :P

Azumarill
Medicham
Slaking
Cofagrigus
Togekiss
Rhyperior
Blissey

We're all going to die, just so we're clear on that score. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Rules and participating Boarders can be found here. Again, April 20th is the last day to submit your team!

Actually, duck and fire. At their feet. Everyone knows that the feet and legs are the weak spot of any dancing fiend.

Or to put it less esoterically, on Saturday, April 14, at 3PM EST, I will be in the generic_salt VoIP on the PPC Discord to play Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. All you will need to participate is a microphone and a copy of the Bomb Defusal Manual, preferably printed. Feel no obligation to look it over early or anything.

If you're joining late, please wait until we're between bombs to pipe up. Don't worry, it won't take very long. And you will know.

If you don't know what Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is, it's a cooperative game where you are tasked with defusing a bomb. In this case, I have the bomb in front of me, and you all have the instructions for how to defuse it. You'll have to talk to me to find out what the bomb looks like, and thusly what instructions to give me to defuse it. I would suggest looking up a let's play of the game if you're interested and want more information.

But why do we trust weatherpeoples anywhere? Or rather, not trust them? ;)

And yup, that sounds like an accurate title.

"Jacob! If you don't hurry up we're going to miss the sun!"

"Assuming you believe the weatherman," Jacob called back, "which you shouldn't..." He sighed and scowled at the shelf. "I've finished all my books, Mum!"

"Then borrow one of Dad's!" Jacob heard the front door clatter again as his dad took the last bag out to the car. "Or pick one from the house!"

"I've read his too." The boy sighed and turned to the small collection of pamphlets and books which had come with the holiday cottage. "It's just going to be that seagull thing again," he muttered, running his finger across the battered spines. "Or A History of Slate in Too Many Words... oh, hello."

The book almost felt like it snagged his finger as it passed. It was small and slim, bound in a coarse-woven material that had probably once been rich brown, but was now a faded mustard-y colour. The spine had no words on it, but an intricate Celtic knotwork that seemed to grow more intricate the closer he looked.

Jacob slid the book out and looked at the cover. "Wizardry Through the Ages," he read, "A Historical and Practical Guide. Huh." He glanced at the next book along, which looked to be a compendium of folk tales from North Wales. "I guess you're the same sort of thing," he said to the book.

"Jacob!" His mum's voice was growing more and more strident. "Come. Now."

"I'm coming!" Climbing to his feet, the boy gave the book one more look. "You'd better be good," he advised it. "The last thing I want is to be stuck on the beach with nothing to read..."

---

Author's Miscellaneous Notes:
-Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
-I assume the Manual doesn't always wear the same title; this one was designed to snag me, rather than Nita.
-I'm about 14 at this point, so rather late to get getting the Manual. It happens.
-Yes, this is a pretty accurate portrayal of how I acted. ^_~
-Never trust the weatherman in Wales. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

hS

I've, uh... only actually seen Jurassic World once, and can't for the life of me remember what happens next. Nor do I have a good enough grasp on the characters to know if they'd let you tag along.

[Sticks up an advert for a Nother Mysterious Voice from Above]

hS

Currently: Trapped on Tatooine with the knowledge that the Sith have returned.

You know what? I think my best bet is to leave you to your own devices for a while. The Jedi will certainly take care of you - you're their evidence that the Sith are back - so I'll see you again in about... a month? Great.

...

Hi! How're things going?
-Queen Amidala got mad and ordered her soldiers to tear Mos Espa apart to find a hyperdrive. You're now on Coruscant.
-You are one with the Force; the Force is with you. Qui-Gon is an inspirational teacher, and you will spread his word to all the settlements of this desert world.
-Darth Maul has returned, and is right this second in a dramatic duel with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan for the Queen!
-Darth Sidious himself is here, with his new apprentice by his side - a certain little boy...

This one, to save you trawling. I gave up on ever designing a Doubles team and just used Team Second Worst Swordsman (ie, 'The best swordsman in the world doesn't fear the second-best swordsman; he fears the worst, because he doesn't know what the idiot is going to do'). I can't promise a good fight, but I hope I can promise a fun one. ^_^

hS

There's multiple things you can do in the game, only one of which requires the dreaded Other People:

-Catch 'Em All, obviously. We're up to three generations of Pokemon out there, some common, some much less so. Different 'mons seem to occur in different areas, too - when I go to visit my sibling, I find a whole bundle of Electric-types, which simply don't spawn near me. But you can probably find most things if you look long enough. You can catch some evolutions in the wild, but mostly you evolve them by catching enough of the base version.

The first Pokemon you catch each day gives you an XP bonus, increasing each day for a week before it resets.

-Spinning Pokestops. These provide you with Pokeballs, berries (to make catching/evolving Pokemon easier), and sundry other items. Again, you get bonus items on the first stop each day, including a rare evolution item if you manage 7 days straight.

-Gyms! Gyms have been dramatically improved since launch. Now, if you can beat any Pokemon in there, you reduce its health and power in future battles (unless someone on its team comes to feed it a berry to heal it). That means it's possible for even a low-level player to whittle down a gym by sheer attrition.

Gyms also have six slots available right from the start, which means most gyms on your team that you come across will have an empty slot or two. Pop your Pokemon in, lay down a few berries to heal up the occupants, and move on.

The really good thing is that there's no pressure to maintain occupation of a gym - in fact, you don't want to! When your Pokemon is kicked out, you earn 1 coins per 10 minutes it was in there, up to a maximum of 50... which means that after 8 hours, you're actually rooting for the gym to be beaten by another team! This means that you can go around sticking Pokemon into gyms for theme or amusement reasons, rather than having to use your strongest all the time.

Also, Gyms have integrated Pokestops, an excellent bonus for those of us in rural areas.

-Eggses. You can randomly pop an egg from a Pokestop, up to a maximum of 9. You then pop it in an incubator (you have one infinite incubator, plus can buy more with in-game coins) and walk until it hatches - 2, 5, or 10km. 10km eggs in particular are a good way to get Pokemon you've not seen before - I hatched a Trapinch the other day.

-Raids are the only part that's intended to be multiplayer, and even then you can avoid it. They consist of a giant Pokemon spawning in a gym for one hour, which you take a full team to try and beat. They come graded at anything from 1-5 little monster icons; I'm able to beat a level 3 raid by myself, and getting closer on level 4. No, I'll never be able to capture a Legendary that way without engaging with other people, but for collecting Mawile or Misdreavous, I can pull it off. (Level 1 consists mostly of Magikarp. It's hilariously goofy.)

-Missions - sorry, 'Research' - are a brand-new addition to the game, and come in two types. Field Research pops from Pokestops, and you can have three on the go at one time. You get a reward (usually an item, sometime a Pokemon spawning) for completing one, and after doing so on eight (non-consecutive) days, you get a big reward - including, in my case, Moltres.

There's also special research for Professor Willow, which is the same for everyone; again, it's fairly simple tasks, though some will take longer (one of mine at stage 4 is to get 5 candies from my buddy, which means walking 15km with the game running). You get a reward after each set of three, and the end result is apparently being able to catch Mew.

---

Is Pokemon Go deep or filled with substance? Probably not. There's no real working towards long-term goals, other than 'catch enough X to evolve it into Y' (I finally managed to evolve Alakazam the other day, for instance). Everything in the game is centred on enabling you to fill out your Pokedex - you fight in the Gym to earn coins to buy incubators to hatch eggs to get Pokemon, you do missions to earn rarer items to [fight in the Gym/catch Pokemon], etc etc. If you have no interest in trying to complete that list of fictional monsters, then the game probably isn't for you.

But if you do, then seeing that last Abra you need pop up on your screen, catching it in a single ball, and watching it swirl up as it evolves is worth all the time you put into the game. ^_^

hS

I remember "a whole pile of agent concepts and/or grand plans" being a thing years back to the point that there's advice about scaling down your ambitions in FAQs (or that might have been regarding overly-powerful/unusual agents, but still). I think generally sticking to the "one agent team, branch out when you need to" idea is something we should stick with.

Now, that being said, we could use an FAQ question of the form "I have a lot of ideas for potential agents, how do I pick which to start with or whittle them down?" because that is a non-trivial question (which applies to far more than the PPC) and we could spend some time answering it.

- Tomash

I've been through this already, so... lightning round! 1/0, Order of the Stick, xkcd, SMBC, PBF (NSFW), Dinosaur Comics, Kill Six Billion Demons, DM of the Rings, The System, and Darths and Droids.

Most of you have probably already heard of most of these, and am wondering why I'm even bothering to mention them. The answer is simple: someone else on the board might be part of today's lucky 10,000.

"The taint of Chaos has spread far," She says. "We have been getting reports of deranged dancing all across the hive. But our divine Emperor, blessed be his name, seems to have protected you. Perhaps your faith is greater than that of your fellows. I ask you to stay with me, as the powers of Chaos may not have left you. Now, let us purge your corrupted comrades." She leads you in the direction you indicated, and soon you come across a circle of opulently-dress civilians dancing in the hallway. They turn, and, their feet still moving frantically, aim a motley assortment of weapons at you. What do you do?
(Post Script: Your roleplaying was fine.)

You and I already talked this through, but my picks are Tatania, Puck, and Helena.

I'm looking forward to this, seriously! Now if only the meds would quit playing havoc with me so I could get on it.

Not a whole lot of people are signing up, but eh, whatever. It'll be a small tourney, in that case.

I'm still planning on entering, I'm just procrastinating on posting my team.

I mean, there was the initial hype, but when I initially downloaded it, I saw it as an inferior version of Ingress with no depth or substance and an incoherent gym battle system.

No idea what they've done with it since then. I mean, with my shyness and lack of social tact, I couldn't even play Ingress (which required teamwork), a game that I viewed as much better, due in part to that teamwork dependence adding some actual depth and substance.

And not on a road, either, in case you were worried. :)

hS

As for me, I think that it's important to focus on the road and not Pokemon Go.

We were, I explain, but the buggers all waltzed off thataway, and then this crazy dancing thing got me, too, and I have no idea where they are or what's going on here. But I feel a bit better now that you're here, Sister.

(( I dunno how much you want us RPing this, and I can't pretend I know how people actually talk in M41/42, so... ^_^; ~Neshomeh ))

Is the PPC Pokemon tournament still on? I haven't seen a post calling for more signups or a "Tournament START!" one or anything, and I hope it's still a thing that'll happen.

The webcomic I cannot recommend highly enough is Unsounded by Ashley Cope. Not only is the art gorgeous, not only are the characters sympathetic and compelling (or awful and compelling), not only is the story engaging, not only is the world richly imagined and deeply realized... it's also the most regularly updating webcomic I've ever seen, so when you get caught up, you can rely on it to be there for you! {= D

I honestly don't know where to start explaining the story. You begin by meeting Sette Frummagem, a brash young girl with a mysterious lion tail, who is either dragging or being escorted across the continent by Duane Adelier, an erudite zombie wizard. They're on a mission to make Sette's cousin pay his dues to her beloved crime lord father. Are you curious yet?

They run across of a gang of evildoers who are stuffing living people, including kids, full of a dangerous magical substance to sneak it across the border into a neighboring country for nefarious purposes, the true extent of which is revealed in time. They meet Quigley, an expatriate of Duane's country, and his blind son, Matty, who travel with an enormous construct built with the body of a mountain ogre, Uaid. Uaid is very cheerful about it and quite fond of Matty. Quigley is unhappily doing One Last Job for the evildoers. You know you gotta go see what that's all about.

And, look, it just gets even more complicated and beautiful and terrible from there.

I warn you, parts are fairly disturbing (one of the evildoers is a pedophile, for instance; you'll cheer for every bad thing that happens to him), but I never got the impression that any of it is arbitrary. And even the creepy, upsetting images of terrible manifestations of magic gone wrong are drawn with such care and attention to detail, it just blows me away.

I've been trying to get Phobos on board with this comic for years, and he won't just on principle at this point even though I've bought all three existing volumes of the print version just because I like it that much and they're sitting right there on a convenient shelf, so somebody please join me!

~Neshomeh