The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

At a dusty second-hand bookshop, where my family stopped to rest during an interstate car trip, and said we could pick two books. I expect I would've picked up two other books, started walking towards the till, and then noticed the Manual and swapped one of the books, on a complete whim...

^The true story of the day I found a copy of SYWTBAW, which led me to fanfic, which led me to the PPC, which led me to meet hS and marry him, which led to basically my entire life. But I'm still bloomin' miffed that the Oath never took for me.

-Kaitlyn, on Errantry

I'd get my wizardry manual at Twice-Sold Tales, a used bookstore near my college. And then when I sat down to give it a read-through, I'd end up reading more than I intended, getting interested, and becoming a wizard because Twice-Sold Tales has bookstore cats, and one of them would definitely sit on my lap, start purring, and not get off until it was too late.

My PPC manual, I'd probably find in the little personal library I've collected over time.

If Min Ra were recruited to the PPC via a manual, she would probably have snuck into her dad's office and found it among the many scrolls/books/papers lying around. It would have stood out to her because most of the other papers were adult stuff, and it would have been tucked away in some corner, so she would have figured that he wouldn't miss it and stolen it for her own use.

Effie Raptor wouldn't really have a manual, as she was recruited directly by Min Ra.

Freefall (first strip, most recent strip) is a rather engaging comic featuring, among other characters, a rather lazy squid with a very different view on morality compared to humans, a robot that picks up heavy things and puts them down elsewhere, and a genetically engineered sapient wolf engineer. Together, they nominally crew a spaceship and get up to shenanigans ... and then the plot happens. And the deep philosophical questions about AIs.

(and it's about 3k three-panel strips, so the "how much will I need to read to catch up" factor isn't too bad.)

- Tomash, emerging from an archive binge

No, wait, what am I doing? You have no power over me! You... have... no... gah, feet, why you no listen? Help! Someone gorgeous, save me! Preferably someone my swarthy good looks and I actually have a chance with!

(( So that's c), basically. {= ) ))

I admit that I've only read the first one...yes I know, I just never got around to it... I have a bad procrastination habit...

Though, to be more accurate, my high school's library might have been better.

And it'd be a book, of course! =P

I can think of a few places the Powers might have given it to me. It might have been in the school library that I spent so many days in because [Rude Language Regarding Pollen]. But I think it probably would have actually been my iPod itself. It's how I got the book, and if I were to take the Oath, it probably would have been via me repeating after the narrator and waiting to see what happened.

Your soul has fallen to the vilest affliction ever put forth by the dark gods, a corruption that has destroyed better men than you: DANCE FEVER! You dance for so long, and with such vigor, that your whole body is consumed by pain. It is a good pain. As you think this, you crumple to the floor... What do you do now?:

a) Succumb to sensation and cede your soul to the seduction of Slaanesh.
b) Be rescued by a handsome space marine.
c) Be rescued by a beautiful battle sister.
d) MENTAL BATTLE!
e) Check your inventory.

1) The complete misrepresentation of BDSM

BDSM for you who aren't familiar with the term, stands for Bondage-Dominance-Sadism-Masochism and consists of two people, a Dom (or a Domme) and a Sub, who are both willing cause and receive pain respectively. And it's not about the pain itself, it's about causing pleasure, with pain being the means of achieving it. A dominant who gets off on controlling and punishing, and a submissive who gets off on helplessness and punishment. AND by doing so they realize they're also pleasuring their partner, so if a matching couple of a sadist and masochist dabbles into BDSM, it's super win-win!

And here's the problem: Anastasia is NOT a masochist! She is not into that lifestyle and it's clear what she likes is Grey and his playboy millionaire Iron-Man, Batman, Green Arrow persona. A regular, "vanilla" sex as I think she calls it, but not the whole playroom aspect. E.L. James masqueraded a story about a broken, toxic relationship, about a controlling, abussive a-hole, and a tabula rasa woman who actually has to be introduced into every single aspect of intimacy... Yeah, James decided it's "just a love story".

2) What the heck even, E.L. James?!

a) The amount of control Grey tries to exert over Ana. Even after he clearly agreed to keep the dom-sub thing in the bedroom, he basically overrules her every decision about what she eats, what she wears, where she goes, and when she sleeps!
b) Ana's "Inner Goddess & Subconscious" as was already mentioned... Yes, I get what was meant to happen here: the classical "shoulder angel v. shoulder devil" trope. However... that's. not. what. sub-con-scious. means (!). I don't think E.L. James knows the meaning of words she uses!

Decided not to use the site mechanism for crediting inspirations, though, since those show up on a whole separate section of your dashboard. Don't wanna give 'em THAT much credit.

Interestingly, all but two missions have at least one hit already, and none of the interludes have any. I assume some of these are PPCers who wandered over to poke around, but clearly no one is clicking through either series in order. {= / "The Smasher" and "The Girl and Her Dragon" are the two missions no one's clicked on yet, and the three with the most hits are "Diptych: 'Secret Agents' and 'Cosmic Love'" with 9 and "Harry Potter and the Dragonriders of Pern" and "Ring Child" each with 7.

~Neshomeh

Being a laser weapon, it has few moving parts to jam, but you clean the lens and make sure that the power pack is loaded properly, as both of these commonly lead to malfunctions. As you take stock you realize that aren't wearing any socks. You appear to be in an abandoned upscale commercial district, so you could find a clothing store to loot, but you still don't know where the rest of your squad is, the Squats remain a lost civilization, you were supposed to scout for enemies farther down the spire, and the temptation to dance is still strong.

They believe me, but a hyperdive fails to manifest.

How about The Seems?

If you're not familiar, the approach there is to place application forms for "the most interesting job in the world" around. Applicants who met the standards (which may be quite strange) get a job interview that... won't be forgotten in a hurry.

I do it to this day, actually. Because classes are still boring.

And yeah, Nethack is common. As is SSHing home to do some programming.

(I'm current through the Ordeal novellas and Games Wizards Play. Haven't read Feline Wizards #2 and 3 though.)

- Tomash

Some kind of library, not just the one at my school seems to be the most likely option.

(Also should I be happy I caught the reference right away? I wonder if I should go back to those books...)

(Which, as it so happens, is where I found the first Young Wizards book! But only the first. I'd like to read the others sometime.)

I was always hiding in the library in my free time when I was in school, and I was actually a library assistant in middle school. I probably would have found my Manual while re-shelving books, and been curious about this new tome I couldn't remember seeing before...

who frequently got poked to stop reading in class. I don't remember getting banned from showing up with novels though.

I also sometimes made the not-great decision of reading in hallways.

(and then later the school handed me a laptop for disability reasons. Large amounts of NetHack were played during lectures once this happened.)

- Tomash

Before I clicked, I was pretty sure you were talking about YW, but it crossed my mind it could have been the PPC, too.

Then I thought, what if the Flowers got in on the Powers' strategy of presenting Manuals to people under the right circumstances? That might be an interesting way to recruit from supernatural-friendly universes. Or even mundane ones, if they slipped a few dog-eared hard copies on library shelves, random used book stands, those Little Free Libraries that keep popping up, and the like. Most people would pick the thing up, go "yeah right," and walk away, but every so often, a fan with the right balance of keen and crazy would come along and follow the instructions on the back cover... {= )

Well, when I say "the PPC Manual," I probably just mean Volume One: So You've Decided to Become a PPC Agent.

~Neshomeh

Probably middle school, too. I remember hanging out on the floor in the corner where they had the fantasy/sci-fi books, looking for the next McCaffrey or L'Engle I hadn't read yet.

Trivia: I was actually banned from having novels with me in class, because if I got bored in math I'd read instead of listen. Maybe math class should have been more interesting. {= P

Could potentially have been one of the first to access a Manual on a computer, too, back in Ye Olden Days of Dial-up. They were fairly common in schools when and where I was a kid, and I had an MSN chat habit for a while. Eventually turned into an AIM habit, and a fan board habit, and a Neopets RP habit, and a PPC habit...

Y'know, I could see the Manual hiding out on ff.net and other such archives.

~Neshomeh

There are 43 people who've made more that one post on the front page (if we ignore Deadpool, a Mary Sue, and Mythcreant), while only 13 people (again, ignoring Deadpool and Mythcreant) have more than 10 posts (8 of those 13 have over 25 posts). There's also (if various single-use names are discounted) 8 people who have one post on the front page.

So it looks like the Board is made of a bunch of folks who wander by occasionally and don't post too often. That doesn't look too good as far as engagement goes.

(I'd do some stats on the Discord, but it seems a lot harder to do stats on.)

- Tomash

Since I know there's a few Cousins on the Board (and since there's a plea for more discussions below), I was wondering: if the Powers were looking to offer you wizardry back in the day, how would they have gone about it?

In my case, I suspect I'd either have gotten snagged by a Manual somewhere in my middle school's library (I spent a whole bunch of time wandering around in there). Alternatively, I might have gotten slid a shiny new computerized one, probably by way of a Linux LiveCD that had undergone some tweaking.

(for the many of you who have no idea what I'm on about, this is referring to the Young Wizards series, which I'd like to recommend. I can be more detailed than that if anyone would like.)

- Tomash