The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Iunno, I'm tired, but it looked like it could've been mistaken.

I like to play dress-up games made for young girls, just for some masochistic fun, and I can confirm, at least for Frozen: The corporations that make these things are just as bad as the fandumb!

I mean, I played a love triangle game between Elsa, Jack Frost and Hiccup (big forkin' surprise) where Elsa was asking each boy questions to prove they loved her, and one of the questions for Jack was "why should we be together" or something like that. The correct answer could literally be summarized as "because we both have ice powers." THAT'S IT. The EXACT. SAME. REASON. THE FANDUMB. SHIPS IT. That's not a reason to ship these two characters.

Personally, in my opinion, if people actually looked past the urge to Get Shipped Quick and (in the corporations' case) the right-wing "OHH WE CANNOT TEACH OUR LITTLE GIRLS TO BE LESBIANS, OR EVEN THAT THEY DO NOT NEED MEN, OR ELSE HUMANITY WILL DIE, ONE ONE ONE!!!!", and into the personalities of the characters, Jelsa would not be shipped, Helsa (Hans x Elsa) would not be shipped, and Elsanna (or as I call it, Annacest) would definitely not be shipped. It would be OCs or nothing. Elsa likes to have things under her control. Jack likes to make mischief. He'd drive her absolutely insane. (Or you can change my mind.) And Hans, we know, is a self-centered jerk, so why do people ship Helsa? Because heterosexuality is my only guess.

Wow, that got sociopolitical really quick. I'm normally not like this except with Barbie and Ken type "too blonde to be true" stuff.

But yes, I definitely hate that too.

-Twistey

Could you expand on how it might've sounded like only one prompt? I'm not seeing the ambiguity.

- Tomash

And only to the fanfic and social media sites that have a bigger percentage of mature people. That looks like it should sorta work...?

Any further ideas or criticism of the above?

-Twistey

You mean the control prompt and the random prompt, right? Because the way you phrased it makes it sound like it's just one prompt total.

Now, to answer your question, we want one set of prompt fills featuring an agent team you're planning to write with and the bios for those agents.

The idea is to demonstrate that you can write in the universe, not to give us a complete sense of your grand plan (if you have one).

- Tomash

I know most of y'all are on Discord, but there's a Slack, too!

Invite link is https://youngwizards-slackin.herokuapp.com/

Don't you all flood in at once, now. ;)

Hey, I kinda know the feeling. I do way too much worldbuilding as well. Although I'm just a newbie, if there's any help or motivation I can offer, I'd be glad to offer it. Happy Boardaversary and I believe in you.

-Twistey

Congratulations on sticking around, congratulations on not feeling self-loathing about your work, and congratulations on writing your own content.

Here's a better way to say it's noon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWaN8b-FwDI

...you've managed to survive me for one whole year!
Or one year and four days, as my first post was on April 4th, 2017.

So far, it's been a pretty good year. I had a rocky start, but once I managed to get a hang of it, I got to enjoy many things that make this place awesome. I got to make some good online friends, I have a recruit pending from Scratch, and I'm beginning work on my Permission Attempt.

Hence, I'm looking forward to another great year!

-Twistey

P.S. Speaking of Permission, only one set of prompts and it's for your main partnership, right? Do I have to put in the bio of every agent I've come up with? (Likely yes and yes, but just for clarification.)

IT'S HIIIIIIIIIIIIGH NOOOOOOOOOON

Apparently over here is April 9th... Which means it's my 3rd Boardiversary. Time surely flies. Meanwhile, I'm still here, pretending I know what I'm doing, striving for attention and any sort of recognition which I can never hope to achieve which writing as bland as the one I'm presenting...

But for some reason, I'm not feeling this as self-loathing anymore. Nor as a pity play, I hope. I... honestly feel like I've burned out 90% of my skills. And so now I'm left with mountains of ideas and I'm going back to world-building instead of... you know... actually write something.

But there is another side to this coin; I would probably never had started writing my own content, and would end up in a sucky fan-fic land, if it wasn't for the PPC. If it wasn't for those who agreed to look at my ideas, who decided to talk to me about concepts and issues, and those who told me 'Nope, don't do that. Approach it from a different perspective'. And for that, from the bottom of my cold, cold, heart...

Thank you.

...in case this will be of any help, here are some Scratch projects with my voice in them, if it'll give you any ideas on what roles will sorta "match" my voice.

Or... it's my voice from the period of time that each project was made in. I can't record myself at this moment, so until then, here's a bunch of old voiced stuff. *begins looking through my wonderfully horrible old projects*

For projects with multiple voices/characters, my old avatar is the girl with a whack ton of ginger hair and neon green eyes.

-Twistey

The Decentest of my Old Voiced Stuff:
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/69354690/
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/64644614/
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/140181548/
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/117727455/
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/86995490/

That's exactly the bookstore I mentioned in my post too. It is such a perfect place for stumbling across a Manual.

My college campus is just a few blocks away from it.

...the Twice-Sold Tales in Seattle, is it? Because that is such a Young Wizards-esque bookstore.

Good prompt!

(okay, fair warning: this one may get a little dark. Sorry?)

I was drowning in opportunities, as a child- grew up with shelves upon shelves of books in the house, more at friends' houses, a big library a mile or so up the road... but none of those sit right with me, somehow.

I found fandom and then the PPC mostly thanks to my sister, and a whole world of words and people and ideas I'd never met before, but none of those felt quite like meeting a Manual either. I was too centered, too sure of myself to be ready to accept that my world was but a tiny fraction of a bigger reality.

I grew up and went off to college, as people do, and had opportunities there too. It could have happened while I was wandering through the old section of the library, two buildings and five half-flights of stairs away from the doorway most people used. I could have seen an odd spine on the little shelf in the ACM's little room, or on one of the 'free' shelves that appeared outside professors' offices during break. Perhaps there was a Manual there, perhaps I touched its spine before moving on- but I did move on. I started to question myself, my reality, but I still wasn't ready.

Let's be honest: I hid from it. I tried to fit back into old places, old patterns of thought, but they just didn't fit like they once had.

The moment I was ready to find my Manual was a Saturday afternoon, fading into evening, early in December 2014. Three years out of school, three years into a career, and I finally hit the breaking point and acknowledged that I was missing something fundamental, that I couldn't just ignore away the walls of the corner I'd shut myself into.

I remember walking- it was getting dark early, as Seattle does in that season. It was raining just a little, enough that there weren't many people out. I was as alone as I've ever been in the awkward space between downtown and capitol hill, wandering. Wishing for an adventure, for meaning, for something - and yes, Young Wizards was one of the things that came to mind.

There's a little bookstore, on that hillside- in a world slightly to the left of this, it's run by a pair of witches and a half-dozen cats who won't say if they're familiars. In a world slightly to the left of this, there's a shelf in the back that only shows up when people need to find it. In a world slightly to the left, I would have left the bookstore with a book in my hands and an Ordeal starting as the city lights came on.

I'd still have to deal with being trans, of course- that's not going anywhere, magic or no. What does transness look like among wizards, I wonder? Given that shapeshifting is a thing, it seems like it'd be easy to just... misplace an ill-fitting gender, on the way back.

But, yes. It's an old paper copy for me, a printing that sat and waited until I was ready to find it.

Through the haze of abject agony, you hear a voice: On your feet, Guardsman! There are heretics to slay!
You open your eyes to see a figure clad in Sorotias power armor so shiny you can see your face (or, at least your re-breather and goggles) in it, who helps you to your feet. This Battle Sister, who carries herself with the intense, manic, energy common to those who fight for the Ecclesiarchy, turns looks you in the eyes and asks: "Where's the rest of your squad? I thought you were under orders to patrol in groups."

My personal favorites are Wizard's Holiday (cool aliens) High Wizardry (ditto, and also all the computer stuff). But that's just me.

- Tomash

My Manual would likely be in my own house, hidden in the study in amongst the really, really old books that my hoarder antiques dealer grandad collected before his untimely death. They are absolutely everywhere, and the overwhelming majority have a sort of forest-green binding and cream pages that feel like they have a magic all of their own.

Now, a PPC Manual, well... there's no actual rule talking about how big a Manual has to be, right? Or what form it has to take. We already know that a lot of agents started out answering want-ads in the classified sections of their local newspaper. Why couldn't a Manual take that kind of form, with an intriguingly bananas front page headline (my favourite one, and this is real, is "ALIEN OYSTERS INVADE") to draw in and ensnare some curious soul who might make for a willing/vaguely competent agent. Just my two cents. =]

I didn't really want to comment on the BDSM aspect in my initial post, partly to keep it work safe, but mostly because I didn't want to misrepresent something I'm not familiar with.

You know, I didn't really make the "shoulder angel/devil" connection with Anastasia's subconscious and inner goddess . . . friends. It gets a bit blurry, with the subconscious/angel sometimes being cruel to Ana, and the inner goddess/devil being less "bad" and more just . . . uh . . . constantly "thirsty"? If that's PG enough for the Board?

—doctorlit himself has a spirit of second-guessing self doubt and an inner day planner, himself

I mean, you never know. Obviously it's part of his characterization, but past that--who knows? I mean, I do, being the author, but mystery is the name of the game here. Whether there's actually something to be mysterious about or not.

(Mystery aside, I'm not done writing Jacques, so... we'll see! I do unfortunately write rather slowly when it comes to finishing things and getting them out, so his next thing might take a while. I am working on things, though.)

Actually, speaking of getting things out: I'm pretty sure you're one of the betas for something I was working on, uh, last winter (the Abaddon-T'Zar interlude. I can relink you if needed). While I have your attention, could I ask you to take another look at it sometime this week? I need to go through it, which might or might not happen today like I want it to, but after that I think it might be close to ready to post.

~Z

It's amazing to hear that we did those things well, because I know exactly what you mean about both talking heads and Cowrite Disease--and I've actually been making a conscious effort to avoid them recently, especially the latter, so... basically, fantastic :D (And no, you most definitely don't speak from experience...not at all... :) What can I say, I was reading early Dafydd missions a month or two ago out of curiosity and because I suddenly wasn't sure I *had* read more than half of them. More likely it had just been a long time, but who knows?)

Anyway. Like Ix said, the fic wasn't too big on setting descriptions, but there are probably a good handful of places where we could add a bit more of "the agents landed in the next scene, made faces at each other, and ducked hurriedly behind a tree." I've already found one while going in to see about GMA's feedback, actually. If we can find some more spots that we both like, that can go ahead. There definitely is a bit of it in there already, though.

What else...ah, yes. I'm glad the section in the middle stood out to you; like I wrote to GMA, it's nice to hear you did specific things right. Especially if it's an entire section!

But yes. Thanks for the concrit (autocorrect wants that to be 'concert'; do you sing or play an instrument, by any chance?) and the comments! They're all appreciated.

~Z, somehow on a roll with responses. On to Tomash! And GLORY!

Re: the critique, you have a point. I originally wrote in the description because I thought they really weren't going to get there in time to see that part of the scene; when we ended up putting in that they did, I didn't think to remove it. Good news is it looks like it can be cut out without changing a thing...which is probably as good a sign as any that it should go! I'll wait for Ix to wake up and have a spare moment, but I've marked it in the doc. Thanks for bringing it up!

Also, glad you liked the parts you mentioned :) It's always nice to hear you did specific things right.

~Z